Poetry

Forgetting

Translated by: 
Dong Li
1.
The sundial     heads     that receded in secret.
Whose metre drew out their false curves?
The altar of your eyes was sunken
facing an immense building of tomorrow
when a comet hit muxidi.*
If I were you, you could be him: a mantissa
her last glance crossed
the bellowing of the deer.
 
2.
The red homonym of snow, spewing
flowers, blooming painlessly
a flower triggered the opening non-flower of death
which was real. It climbed onto your name
under shrubs in spasm –
prop-like toes were painted in the black salt of fireflies
and were carried away like this
very much like the scenes of the recent earthquake.
 
3.
Lightning-fast flames from the machine guns
kissed every tender face. The morning taps
washed over and over night’s ashes.
The scabs would turn into stalagmites, in the heart
a missing person came by, a person missing
for too long, his thin arms looking like Don Quixote’s.
Countdown time was up. Please read, read like the second hand of the clock
in the rattling of tracks, what has been mired in confrontation for a
thousand years.
 
* An important access point into central Beijing from the west suburbs. On June 4, 1989 the greatest number of casualties occurred here.

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