Sichuan, May 2008

 

What is an earthquake? What makes a flower grow:

children in a school and then houses crumple –

 

when houses crumple, one cannot be angry

没有欢乐

That man on evening news with the dirty T-shirt,

the camera lingering over a broken Chinese doll on cracked soil –

so many must have said I’m not ready

为什么

 

Why is this so: a boy trapped under a beam,

his mother lying nearby,

saying I don’t think it’s time

已经晚了

 

What is an earthquake? What makes a flower grow:

children in a school and then houses crumple –

 

Why is this so: a man sees his angel

and cries I am under the stones and the stars

我在天堂

救命， 救命

and then falls asleep.

 

A grandmother under a doorframe

thinks of the potatoes next to her

and worries others may steal them

(but there’re no potatoes).

 

What is an earthquake? What makes a flower grow:

children in a school and then houses crumple.

 

 

Sweatshop Poem

 

This is a story, no,

this is a poem

about a noun that blazed her way

through my sentences.

 

She tore up the form book

and forgot the rules

and as a responsible writer,

I thought I should stop writing and suspend the event

because of safety fears.

 

[一对新人现身]

Or maybe she is waiting

for a married couple to appear,

maybe she wants to be translated into Chinese.

 

She was violent and angry

because she cannot be translated.

 

But in the end,

none needed to be admitted to hospital

even though there may have been a fire.

 

Maybe she is waiting

for 张国荣

her Leslie Cheung pop star romance lover

to appear like a verb

to her noun.

 

This sweatshop of a poem will not involve romance,

so she needs to do some real work.

 

But this writer, her current employer,

has fired two employees within seven days.

 

The noun tried to run away,

but was in trouble because she did not do her work

of making this poem make sense.