SIbilA – AN INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF POETRY
CHINESE POETS
YAO FENG
Crossing CentralPlains
Train cuts across GreatEarth
Ripened sweet corn has taken in sunlight
Long-months-long-years
They make themselves as seed
Countless times they lie down
Then they make themselves as food
Countless times climbing up
They grin just like I grin
Mouths full of yellow teeth
Without a single gold filling
Nanjing
Fine rain drizz-drizzling, I have come to Nanjing again
French wutong plane trees converse in Chinese
Yuhua [rain-flower] stones washed clean of bloodtraces, sit in water-basins
on roadsides
OpeningWide at tourists a riotous profusion of eyes
I like Nanjing
Like meeting with friends in wine-bars
To chat-chat about the China, poetry, woman
But these descendants of survivors and victims of the Nanjing Massacre
Have never talked to me about history
Pattaya
Nightshades fall, Ocean supports boats boats in its hand
Palm trees scissor an evening breeze to pieces
In this Good-cheap Buddhist nation, neon glitter everywhere, false shows of
peace prosperity
Dim-lit shadow bars
Old men from distant shores of GreatOceans
Drinking whisky and Tiger beer
Groping the neat buttocks of Thai women with thick US dollars euros
Chest hair exposed They
have lived to old age with no gain of power to the spirit
All they do�Through the sewer of their flesh-body�is excrete
the loneliness deep inside heartminds
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DUO YU
The Narrow
I haven't said a word to anyone
since I got up this morning
I haven't checked the internet, read the paper, or listened in
on my neighbours' chit-chat
my lips get tighter the longer they stay shut, my teeth
go rusty in my mouth my body is trapped in a mirror
its habitual lack of appetite intact
May noise
squeezes in under the door
mixed with dirt with suspicious inflammations
outside the world's gone mad
but life is another matter
watching mirrors darken, sheets of paper grow old
I open my window to a narrow patch of sky
birds skim over
concrete rooftops
fly away then
or waste time
but tell me: who can
reach the limit?
remain detached?
transform himself utterly?
Bird of Prey over the City
it hovers immobile
tranquil blue above noise
when it spreads its wings, it takes all weight with it:
a wall turns into a roaring ocean
when pigeons glimpse this rare sight, they cannot stop themselves
screaming. they consider renewing their lives
I am a convict bent double in my basement
the eagle's dark shadow grazes my body
my legs are as mean as a mouse's
my heart jolts to the left, to the left
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YU XIANG
I Really Want
I long to hold you in my arms
Now, my right hand rests on my left shoulder
My left hand rests on my right shoulder
I just want to hold you in my arms, and in my longing
My head hangs down
Now, you stand here near me
How I long to hold you in my arms
Urgently tightly hold you
This is my longing I hug my shoulders even more tightly in my arms
Poem in My Pocket
If I put a poem in my pocket
with a bunch of keys
it would make disturbing noises with my key-ring
If I put a poem in my pocket
with some loose change
it wouldn't turn into money
It would turn more like sugar,
sticky and sweet-smelling
If I put a poem in my pocket
with a tissue it would get crumpled tattered round the edges
If I put a poem in my pocket
with another poem
I can't imagine what would happen
But if I put a poem in my pocket
with a condom
they would stay together like body and shadow
A happy thought:
Only these two would stay in my pocket for love
Satan
All my life I've prayed:
Dispose of me as You see fit.
Use me. The perfect slave
But my Lord never noticed
I made myself so concrete, faithful as a dog
And yet I was cast aside all the same
No, that too is a lie
Gradually I was led into darkness
There I sought
Truth body and soul
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YANG KE
The Chinese People
The workers who have to beg for wages. 148 pairs of injured hands
waving from the Daqing coal mine.
Li Aiye, who caught AIDS after giving blood.
The shepherd bachelors of the loess slopes.
Gossipy women, mouths slick with spit as they count their cash.
Hair salon girls: unlicensed sex-workers.
Peddlers engaged in a running battle warfare with city authorities.
Old bosses
in need of a sauna.
The 9 to 5 tribe off to work on their bicycles.
Good-for-nothings with no where to go and nothing to do.
The bar-room wasters. Old men
sipping tea as they pet songbirds.
Scholars who fill the heads of their listeners with fog.
Derros, punters, porters stinking to high heaven;
dandies, beggars, doctors, secretaries (and secret mistresses into the
bargain); workplace clowns and other supporting actors.
From the Avenue of Heavenly Peace to the Guangzhou Dadao
I am yet to see 'the Chinese people' this winter;
I've seen ordinary bodies with the power of speech
keeping each other warm
on buses day after day.
Like grimy coins:
those who use them hand them over frowning
to society.
This Is the Latest on Yang Ke
He eats a pepper steak in a pub
then 'grabs a cab' as they say in this town,
wandering past stalls piled sky-high with colour.
Here in the South where night never falls
he watches money counterfeit love with strange girls�
His heart is half rotted away already.
Once in a while from a jumble of ice-cold intelligent words known as
poetry
he looks up
like a fly on its pile of shit.
Beijing Wind
Windy Beijing:
people on bikes
and startled sparrows everywhere
The sticky air is filthy
Trapped in haze, the sun
is like a ruddy moon
Yesterday, only yesterday, we had clear autumn weather
Air-borne paper metaphysical, soaring
Plastic bags gliding overhead swollen
so that the form of the wind is visible to me
Leaves rustle in trees
Covered from head to foot in dust, sparrows
fly twittering back to their nests
The ground is littered with Beijing accents
Thou, from whose unseen presence the buses and taxis
are driven
Riding my bike, I
am like an arrow
taut against the bow-string
Fired into the Beijing wind
I shoot through the door of my rented house
Two policemen come knocking:
I remember my boyhood,
fingers poked in a bird�s nest
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SHENG XING
A Volatile Friend's Visit
when he came to see me in my home in the sky
I was elsewhere
he spent the whole afternoon
waiting for my return
overturning racks of clothes
upending my book shelves
and tossing cigarette butts all over the floor
when, standing at the window,
he saw my silhouette approach in the dusk
he immediately stretched out his arms
and began to screech
like an eagle about to dive
Donkey
I want to go on a long journey riding�not some fine steed
� but a donkey I could manage all this just with its stubbornness
you have to believe me
and go on calling me a knight
we could meet a pack of wolves on a plain
we could die exhausted in mountain snow
we could walk to our deaths on some sea-coast
or perhaps
as soon as we'd got out the front gate
my donkey would throw me off
After Rain
after rain, by a pond
we wade through thick grass
every step startles up a frog
which jumps PUTONG! into the pond
like our feet were frog-producing machines
but only a sudden clap of thunder
can jump them collectively into the pond together
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FANG XIANHAI
Corruption
Cities
corrupt flesh
Desk drawers
corrupt secrets
Sleeping pills
corrupt the last sentence held back
Everything is much the same
when you feel despair
These people stained with the habit of darkness
I ask:
How many surnames fill light's death-pit and produce pen-strokes like dead
branches?
Ruin
Passing the ruin
The roof has flown away
The me on the roof
has flown away with it
A long time ago
I sat up on the roof
acquiring the gift of flight
I sat in the shadows of flying birds
Bulldozers roared past
The first joint
The first sex-love
For these things the world
was once complete
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JUN'ER
Home
On three persimmon trees
in the yard of my old home:
Autumn persimmons after a morning-long drive
after pulling out all the weeds
I found myself standing in front of them
I picked the fruit, one at a time
and stacked them in the sun
Three persimmon trees, an enclosing brick wall:
this is my old home
A pile of untasted fruit�
what I would like to hold on to but can�t
Cloud shadow, sky light
I pulled down the pigsty
swept away cobwebs
then sized up the old garden
like a stranger from another town
Three trees and a stack of persimmons:
my reward
from a parent now gone
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YI SHA
Factory for Artificial Limbs
I was friends with Chen Xiangdong when we were kids
These days he works in a factory
that makes artificial limbs
One day, he called me out of the blue
and we arranged to meet
I recognized him waiting at the factory gates
his smiling face was exactly the same as before
only magnified a couple of times
I noticed something odd about the way he walked
so I pulled up one leg of his trousers
It's real, he laughed
We only remembered to shake hands
as the two of us began to move off
He squeezed my hand with his fingers
Still intact, just like the good old days
Everything was intact, same as it ever was
We both roared with laughter
The Grateful Drunk
A drunk
was vomiting in the city
vomiting in the rich glow of the setting sun
on a bridge on the city moat
There was no end to it He looked like
he was singing at the top of his lungs
He threw up what he'd eaten
bile, even
On my way home from work
I stopped and took in this sight
I suddenly felt deeply moved
It occurred to me that everyone has their own unique way
of showing gratitude to life
Dreams
Tonight you dreamed
so many dreams so many dreams
but in the morning you could only recall
the contents of one
So you thought: maybe
dreams are cannibalistic �
they devour their own kind
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SONG XIAOXIAN
Dignity
the child left alone by his parents
is upset at first, but then suddenly
a look of childish dignity appears on its face
for the first time in its life
this expression makes its parents regret their actions
and they go straight home
with their two and a half year old
Angels on Earth
in this country
at the mention of the word "angel"
people think at once of a person like a nurse
they always think of someone of this earth
from their own land
no one thinks of an angel
as a being descended from heaven
Beijing, Beijing
I stayed two days in Beijing
Zhongzi informed me
that there were now 16 million people in the city
I got to see 3 of them
and of these, one had just flown back from Boston
Death by Dismemberment
in Beijing
I saw them pulling down old houses from the Ming and Qing dynasties
although they've been at it since 1986
they still haven't finished
demolishing this great city
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YU JIAN
333
we said nothing
during the blackout
in silence we waited in the dark
for the return of the lunatic
who lives inside the on-off switch
like a man waits at home
for his wife
378
half an hour ago you were a crimson dick
heretically red as you lay on the single bed of spring
resisting nothingness with a vigorous sap
now you are a muscular steelworker
the furnace fire is the red of labour
not long after you chat with your girl-friend Jane
blushing red red all over from your cheeks down to your thighs
none of these things are flags
none of these reds are dyed
380
so beautiful, this chicken gold-yellow
this is the one I'll eat the cook obeys
wrenching it at once from the cage
to prepare it for me just like that
in a small way, then, I have known
the pleasure of tyrants
who can kill whom they please
at whim
382
two things have been left behind in this public place:
a copy of today's newspaper
and a flat soccer ball
scuffed by 10 million feet
the sun lights up the latest news, the editorial
there on page one
the airless ball cowers in shadow beneath a bench
just hanging on
a school-boy with his bag on his back crosses the street
after looking around
he gets down on one knee
retrieves the ball does his shoelaces up tight
then jumps to his feet and walks on, hugging the ball to his chest
he didn't look twice at those sheets of folded paper
Conheça o livro de poesia chinesa em português Um Barco Remenda o Mar
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