^{translated from the Chinese by Joshua Edwards and Lynn Xu}

1.

No,
Behind the truth are other truths

2.

Rain makes a painting on the earth 
In the classical manner
Meticulously depicting what’s hidden from view:
Mountain, forest, valley, gorge
Building, vehicle, person 
Beasts, cattle, creeping things, and flying fowl
Gradually expressing the outline 
From invisible to visible 
From solid state to a state of change 

Is this a form of justice? 
Rain, and representations of rain 
Shrouds, and the shroud’s ability to obscure and to change 

This is like one who suffers 
Crying
To describe the hunter, the torturer, the thief, the grifter, and the assassin 
The one who suffers uses tears and exacting brush strokes
To scrub away the silk threads of pain, endless sorrow, sharp anguish, heartache, bloodletting grief, pain of breaking bone, pain of a thousand cuts, pain of losing one’s soul . . .

How many tears 
Are needed to provoke 
Another’s tears of sympathy?

Pain forms the boundary between life and death 
Rain is another name for heaven and earth 

All in the end is water

獻給苦難中的眾生

—1—
 

不，

在真相的背後還有真相


—2—

 

雨在大地上作畫
用工筆
細細描繪那些遮蔽物：
山、林、溝、壑
>建築、車輛、人
走獸，飛禽，爬蟲
使其漸漸顯出輪廓
從隱形，到顯像
從固態，到變、化

這是某種形式的正義嗎？
雨，和雨的描繪
遮蔽，和遮蔽的隱形與變化

這就如同 痛者
以眼淚<
描摹獵者、虐者、竊者、快者和忍者
痛者以眼淚、工筆
刷洗絲絲之痛，磅礡之痛，細密之痛，錐心之痛，泣血之痛，裂骨之痛，凌遲之痛，失魂之痛……

要多少眼淚
才能令他者
掬一掊同情之淚？

痛是生者與死的邊界
雨是天壤之別稱

而這一切皆歸於水

^{translated from the Arabic by Kareem James Abu-Zeid}

And all that remains for me is to follow a violet darkness
on soil where myths splinter and crack.
Yes, love was time, and it too
splintered and cracked
like the face of our country.

My share of the people
is the transit of their ghosts.

عتَمات بنفسجيّة

  
ولَيْسَ سِوى أَن أَتْبَعَ عَتَماتٍ بَنَفْسَجيّة
فَوْقَ تُرْبَةٍ تَتَشَقَّقُ فيها الأَساطير 
،أَجَلْ، كانَ الحُبُّ زَمَناً وتَشَقَّقَ، هو الآخَرُ 
مِثْلَ وَجْهِ بلادِنا

.حِصَّتي مِنَ النّاس عُبورُ أَشْباحِهِم

No, nothing, no thing, no where— 
the o of no blinks open 

I think that you think that I think 
too much about grief 

It’s not only mine—we’re in the same current 

You won’t hear it blazing always in the unprocessed 
wind under the voice recording 

I wear my nerve halo, a handful of seeds, a breakdown 
in the blood-brain barrier

It’s come to this: the interstate with star-shaped 
plants and mile markers that multiply one’s belonging 

Can you hear the low pulse tree-growth consuming the fence? 

Books are states of consciousness, a record— 
What won’t finally kill you, you eat its tongue 

Holy I’ll make the alphabet for interrupters, malcontents
Holy is the person who digs the person out the rubble into the grave

About you: weather will taste metallic in the overnight 
visuals, something lightdark, slick-liver-wet 

Put a whisper into a jar, a war 
trots out of your chiaroscuro head

If I were but the west wind, 
   I would follow you; 
Cross a hundred hills to find 
   Your world of green and blue;

In your pine wood linger,
   Whisper to you there 
Stories old and strange, and finger
   Softly your bright hair.

^{translated from the Chinese by Florence Wheelock Ayscough}

                                               I

The many-coloured clouds make me think of her upper garments, of her lower garments; 
Flowers make me think of her face. 
The Spring wind brushes the blossoms against the balustrade, 
In the heavy dew they are bright and tinted diversely. 
If it were not on the Heaped Jade Mountain that I saw her,
I must have met her at the Green Jasper Terrace, or encountered her by accident in the moon. 

                                               II

A branch of opulent, beautiful flowers, sweet-scented under frozen dew. 
No love-night like that on the Sorceress Mountain for these; 
Their bowels ache in vain. 
Pray may I ask who, in the Palace of Han, is her equal?
Even the “Flying Swallow” is to be pitied, since she must rely upon ever new adornments. 

                                               III

The renowned flower, and she of a loveliness to overthrow Kingdoms——both give happiness. 
Each receives a smile from the Prince when he looks at them. 
The Spring wind alone can understand and explain the boundless jealousy of the flower, 
Leaning over the railing of the balcony at the North side of the aloe-wood pavilion.

Once I bathed in new phrases,

spoke with the starthroat.



Silked in sentences, curled

inside the parentheses



of dream. Once my father bent

a dime between his index



and his thumb, snapped a house

from air, swallowed gold fire



captured in singing glass. Glass

sang from his circling touch.



But when they came for him,

he danced to their orchestra



of bullets.

                          We did not wait

to tuck him safely



into earth, raise his name

in stone.



                           What

we buried we buried



beneath our ribs.

                           At the border

of the country



of

                           the future—



I own nevers,

                             

                            dusty

keys



                     with no receiver.

I carry him

                                            and cross the river.

From where are we getting this information? A woman god?
I don’t think so. 

Fem greatness only ever declines on this graph
showing allowable outcomes. 

Know-it-all women decline know-it-all men 
because know-it-all men know so little it’d fit in a rice pot. 

I make my facts and data from internal sources, secret sauces.
I know better. No one knows better one’s own side of things

but knowing how to convince the true authority
on the matter that you are  

the true authority on the matter—
well…. Haven’t we all fallen for that, once?

Off-grid, between us, can you imagine knowing yourself
well enough to believe you know others as well?

This Very Dance called Every Rise, Each Fall. The one 
you must know and show in order to get anywhere in this society. 

In this stinkin’ society where you can’t even say the word
religion (doesn’t matter which) without your back

seizing up out of nowhere. I don’t know if we’re in the middle
of the ending or the beginning of some new concussion. 

I have my doubts. I think we might be fucked. 
We need some woman-greatness.

Some entity that won’t exist unless we all come together
and wish very hard for her to swim 

to our dreamy poolsides. She’d come in summer,
while everyone still wishes very hard to have a fun time.

To relax, melt in the sun, miss work. 
Float free in the water, alive-alive, not think about 

who got shot, who next, and who is right now
falling from the sky, from one side to the other one side. 

    Dear common flower, that grow’st beside the way, 
Fringing the dusty road with harmless gold, 
          First pledge of blithesome May, 
Which children pluck, and full of pride, uphold,
   High-hearted buccaneers, o’erjoyed that they
      Eldorado in the grass have found, 
        Which not the rich earth’s ample round 
    May match in wealth, thou art more dear to me
   Than all the prouder summer-blooms may be. 

    Gold such as thine ne’er drew the Spanish prow
Through the primeval hush of Indian seas, 
          Nor wrinkled the lean brow 
Of age, to rob the lover’s heart of ease; 
   ’Tis the Spring’s largess, which she scatters now 
To rich and poor alike, with lavish hand, 
       Though most heart never understand 
    To take it at God’s value, but pass by 
    The offered wealth with unrewarded eye. 

    Thou art my tropics and mine Italy; 
To look at thee unlocks a warmer clime; 
          The eyes thou givest me 
Are in the heart, and heed not space or time:
    Not in mid June the golden-cuirassed bee
Feels a more summer-like warm ravishment 
       In the white lily’s breezy tent,
    His fragrant Sybaris, than I, when first 
    From the dark green thy yellow circles burst. 

    Then think I of deep shadows on the grass, 
Of meadows where in sun the cattle graze, 
          Where, as the breezes pass, 
The gleaming rushes lean a thousand ways, 
   Of leaves that slumber in a cloud mass, 
Or whiten in the wind, of waters blue 
      That from the distance sparkle through 
    Some woodland gap, and of a sky above, 
    Where one white cloud like a stray lamb doth move.

    My childhood’s earliest thoughts are linked with thee;
The sight of thee calls back the robin’s song,
          Who, from the dark old tree 
Beside the door, sang clearly all day long, 
     And I, secure in childish piety, 
Listened as if I heard an angel sing
        With news from heaven, which he could bring 
    Fresh every day to my untainted ears 
    When birds and flowers and I were happy peers. 

    How like a prodigal doth nature seem, 
When thou, for all thy gold, so common art! 
          Thou teachest me to deem
More sacredly of every human heart, 
    Since each reflects in joy its scanty gleam 
Of heaven, and could some wondrous secret show, 
       Did we but pay the love we owe, 
    And with a child’s undoubting wisdom look 
    On all these living pages of God’s book. 

Go;—for ’tis Memorial morning—
     Go with hearts of peace and love;
Deck the graves of fallen soldiers;
     Go, your gratitude to prove.

Gather flow’rs and take them thither,
     Emblem of a nation’s tears;
Grateful hearts cannot forget them,
     In the rush of passing years.

Strew the flow’rs above their couches;
     Let thy heart’s affection blend,
With the dewy buds and blossoms,
     That in fragrant showers descend.

Strew the flow’rs above the heroes,
     Slain for loving friends and thee;
Canst thou find a better off’ring,
     For those sons of liberty?

While the buds and blooms are falling,
     Earnest hearts are asking,—Why—
In a tone, though low and gentle,
     Yet, as ardent as a cry,—

‘Why must precious lives be given,
     That our country may be free?
Is there not a nobler pathway
     To the throne of liberty?

‘Can we choose no nobler watch-word,
     Than the ringing battle-cry,
Harbinger of strife and bloodshed,
     Must we sin, that sin may die?

‘Long ago, to far Judea,
     Came the blessed Prince of Peace:
Shall we ever heed His teaching,
     That these wars and feuds may cease?’

The way, exposed to weather, a body is worn. Velvet threads begin to
wither, rapid ripened beyond the burst bloom. Vibrant strands, cut short,
fray, unweaving faded fabric. Sun-struck, rain-warped, storm-blasted,
rough-sanded in whipping wind that whittles rock. 

Small, torturous fractures opened in stone where water freezes in the
pores with grains of salt. Cracks in the surface pried apart by unrelenting
pressure. With incessant freezing and thawing, shock and fatigue speed
rugged stress to ultimate breakdown. Intemperate weather, abrading
edges, gradually disintegrates resolute minerals. 

A boulder, even a mountain, will wear down. So will bodies, bent and
broken under toilsome burdens, caving beneath unbearable weight, in
adverse climate, exposed to harsh elements, caustic rains. 

These are the days of jasmine in Rome
when headlong, emboldened April has dissolved,

and the joyous braiding of sun and rain
brings this sweet, steady broadcast;

when I step from the suppertime train,
that’s what greets me:

Roman hedges and walkways,
graffiti-laden precincts graced

with pallid fireworks, so even
the most tumbledown niches seem

breeze-swept,
festive now with fragrance

Jasmine    the elating moment’s shibboleth,
the cool, enrapturing night’s cavalry

Even crone-glorious Daria,
my terrace-loving neighbor, confides:

When Galliano came back from the front,
his right hand was bandaged,

but in his injured one,
ah, poet, he held

a fistful of jasmine he’d picked
along the path to my door.

How could I not become his wife?

^{The most interesting thing about emptiness is that it is preceded by fullness. —Joseph Brodsky}

1.
She leaves me outside among yellowing
aspens.  Hemlock branches
discarded     dying on this iced clod.

Corms in the ground whiten waiting for another snow.
Fissured face     the skin of me fissured.
The leather of a carriage no longer

fit to front a manor with sequoia moldings
or doors carved in California     shipped
to Louisiana to shut in that house.

Made for another girl now dead.  Her mother
made me out of that tatty carriage-seat leather.
Made me as she evoked her mother’s

country dissolved in seawater.
I’m the leavings of seawater left cold.
Forgotten in cold.

Forgotten in this northern place.
They have forgotten what I have not.
The dark is without forgetting.

That woman filled me with pink
cotton     that annual spell when
cotton explodes that gaudy hue.

I’m holding time in the dark     waiting
for the dappling of sky.
I hear them.

I know them.
They’ll do the thing that wrecks.
They’re unworthy of themselves.

This knowledge wrecks.
But a jester?
That jester?

His brashness     a theory of this land.
A quality encouraged for navigation.
I’m not protected.

Cold     unprotected at night.
Solitary at night inducing 
more creasing     more

staining as they stain themselves     as 
they beg for regression.  As
they beg for the nineteenth 

century     the century I was made.
Hold the clock’s clicking.
Turn it back     make-make America.

She leaves me to see this night.
To see blue televisions through windows.
To hear raucous commentary.

She leaves me to see this night     to
freeze among the frozen.
There’s yellow in the trees tonight.

The girl who leaves me wears 
a yellow dress.
Her boots are white.

2.
I voted for snow     frost     crystals.
I see them falling.
I’ve been falling into myself.

I see myself with myself.
I hold my own hand as I walk through snow.
I walk with my twin.

I wish for a country of twins.
Our slacks are patterned with stars.
We are partisans.

We believe in the belief.
There is only one belief.
There is only one nation.

We are the founders of the nation.
Our blood for this nation.
Our blood in this nation is the nation.

We see it in sunset.
All that we’ve given is sunset.
We aspire to what the billionaire has built.

The lavishness of pink marble 
wild in our sleep.
We want what he has.

We believe what he has is his.
We believe his dream is American.
We believe his reality can be ours.

We believe in oligarchy     ours.
We’re waiting for the chalice    that goddess’s 
slow pouring of shine.

But that frozen doll frightens me.
I’m walking away but I keep 
craning toward it.

Its face of creature     its darkness
on that which is frozen.
I leave it there.

They’re left.  They’re not me.
We voted for snow     its perpetual system.
Radically radical we voted.

3.
He wanted me away. 
I want him away from 
that public house.

In his dream     I’m the boy 
locked in steel.
There’s water in his dream.

I sank.
He saw my hands reaching 
from the steel until they didn’t.

I was a boy.
We were boys.
He wanted to kill the boy.

He wanted the boy dead 
in steel     quickly 
a man in steel.

We became men in steel.
In the paper     he bought our
capture     shouted execution.  

Years in steel.
The sky’s steel here.
It’s cold here.

My daughter is here.
I want her to play.
Be a good girl     play.

I want him away from 
that public house.
How’s he a choice?

Up in Michigan     near Lake 
Superior waiting for spirals     funnels 
of jade     ginger light.

This dawn is near but which dawn?
Which will be created?
So cold here in this north.

The north couldn’t protect.
When has it ever protected?
When has this place protected me?

But I’m trying to protect my 
north     my daughter 
in winter-white boots.  

The breeze isn’t silent. 
I want him away from 
that public house.

I stare skyward yet I see 
the glare of televisions.
My daughter’s fingers are cold. 

4.
My father is afraid 
but he doesn’t say it.
I came in from playing to see 

him     to be around him.  
His hands are colder than snow.
His hands are chapped.

Why are your hands so cold?
The past was cold.  I don’t want 
the past to permit what may come.

What?
He embraces me.  The world
is around me.

Snow     strange     I’m waiting 
for something I don’t understand.
Will you wait for me?

I’m here     forever here     around.
He’s angry at the television.
The blue of the television 

is what’s inside him.
If I could open him     an abrupt
door I could open     step into 

the blue     step into to brightness
burning my eyes.  
I’m quickly blind

within the blue of my father.
He mentions     jester.
He mentions     clown.

He mentions     criminal.
He mentions     killer.
Where’s your doll?

I’ve left her without knowing.
Left her freezing     left her among snow
without protection.

I have to find her.
Go find her.
Bring her inside.

My coat like skin     fake fur on skin.
I’m running back to save 
the one I forgot.

How could I forget her?
She has been forgotten before
but I didn’t want to forget.

Everything tall     green
heavy with whiteness.
My father’s upset even 

when there are auroras
above him     above me     above
this country.

5.
It isn’t dawn when she returns.
But I thought if there would
be a return it would happen at dawn

when America shows what she
hides     what she whispers     what
she denies in conversation     what

she calls crazy in public.
I know this place.
I know its makers.

Those with soft 
hands     rough     always
rough who smile 

yet hide tundras. 
Within them tundras with paths
lined with wet spikes.

Something dead on the spikes. 
Something dying on the spikes.
She’s kissing me.

I’m being carried     kissed
among firs     snow blowing.
They will do it.

They have done it before.
Regression     angry at the lie
they can’t keep from questioning.

I’m loved by a little girl
who knows nothing of me.
I want her father to scream.

If he doesn’t     he may die early.  
He may leave his daughter early.  
So many men leave their daughters early.

Don’t be shocked.
Perhaps you’ve left your daughter?
Fissured face     the skin of me fissured.

Does she know what these fissures hold?
Does she know what she holds?
Does she know what 

her father’s holding?  
What he doesn’t say 
when he sees her     when

he sees the jester?
His hands are over his ears?
She sees him on the porch

as if holding his head together.
It could erupt.
It could combust    St. Helens.

Dust     fire     smoke like 
that mountain.  
We’re all combustible.

But first     implosion.
The birches within us falling.
Not the leaves in autumn 

but the trees themselves     falling.
Paper bark     mangled.
The hidden thump     that

crash beneath ivory cages     skin.
This isn’t greatness.
This isn’t noble.  

A terrible enactment in 
the dark     the light     the cold.
She drops me on the porch

to hold her father’s face.
Hold me.
Hold.

Hold.
Hold.
Hold.

6.
I’m cold here.
Waiting as blue hits my face.
I’ve made a fire.

Crackle.
Crackle.
My son burns marshmallows.  

They’re gooey on graham 
crackers.  Chocolate melts 
on sweet sandwiches.  

The auroras are rare.
I want my son to see the auroras     that 
which is possible in sky.

This was my place as a boy.
This was where my parents took 
me to say this is ours.  

This piece of it is ours.
We feed ducks bread.
But what bread feeds us now?

There’s poison in the bread.
We’re losing.
So much poison     poison

to survive but we 
are surviving without ourselves.
Save us.

Save us with your wealth.
Save us with the way you make wealth.
Fire what’s killing us.  Burn the ground.

Wall us in.  We are being killed.
They are killing us.
Aurora.

Aurora my love     I’m 
waiting for Aurora.
When you come     will we be saved?

Auroras in that sky swirl in the cold.
O beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of….

7.
This is reality?
This is a reality star?
His reality isn’t our 

reality but they believe it can be.
Their reality is fake.
Their false reality exists in their minds.

They are convinced of their reality.
Some realities are based in trickery. 
They want to change a false reality.

But how can they change a reality that doesn’t exist 
other than to change the falseness of that reality 
into what’s actual?  Oh     he changed my reality     that 

reality of innocence to criminal.
My reality became prison.
His fake reality made my reality     my 

reality of childhood to manhood fugacious.
My reality of custody     trial    conviction
was his     the country’s made reality. 

The reality is     it is almost dawn.
The reality is     my daughter is sleeping.
The reality is     this place is now more dangerous for her.

The reality is     auroras are stunning.
I’m staring at the reality of stunning auroras.
I’m in a reality stunned. 

8.
Dawn gleams. 
In my dream     my father is content.
He’s unworried.  

He’s lifting me into cloying light.
I’m wearing a dress of light he has made.
So many are waving at us.

We’re waving back.
A chalice of light was poured 
into the sky.

Snow’s falling.
Snow the color of light is falling
but we aren’t cold.

Forgive us for bells of which we listened     those we didn’t.

Forgive us for ourselves as ourselves. 

Forgive us for causes     effects.

Forgive us for loving the thing we say we don’t.

Forgive us for unloving the thing we say we do.

Forgive us for seeing     not seeing.

Forgive us for hoping for the thing we couldn’t say.

Forgive us for whispers.

Forgive us for disbelief.

Forgive us for shock.

Forgive us for hiding everything. 

Forgive us for imprudence.

Forgive us for ferocity.

Forgive us for obliteration.

Forgive us for slyness.

Forgive us for getting what we want.

We are what we want.

 

On the Monday after Mother’s Day, 
after another mass shooting, 
I pick up my daughter from school 
and on the ride home while she munches 
on veggie chips and looks out the window, 
she tells me a modern day fairytale:

“Luke killed a frog today 
at the playground
during recess
the frog was small
not a baby frog
a teenage frog
because he had a medium-sized body 
not a small body
a green & blue medium-sized spotted body 
Luke stepped on it & stepped on it
until there was blood
& the teacher had to call the frog ambulance
& Luke was put on the naughty list
& I was the only one who yelled stop! 
Stop! Don’t kill it! 
but Luke wouldn’t listen
& the others joined in on the stomping
& I yelled stop! 
but no one would listen
& they stomped & stomped
& killed the frog 
& and it bled red
out of its eyes
out of its head
& it made me sad
& can we buy the frog flowers
because when someone dies they should get flowers
& Mami, what if that frog was supposed to be a prince 
but now he’s dead
& now we’ll never know”