Three Poems from “Remember the Departed Souls”

At home in Beijing, 5/18/2005
Sixteenth anniversary offering of 6/4

 

1

16 years later the night’s
white lily of sacrifice has transformed into nightmare
a wound like an ideal torn apart
stutter stammering through the story of the graves

16 years ago in that moment
the world was a lamb
allowing the madness of slaughter
turning to heaven speechless stupefied
weeping in silence sighing in silence

I no longer hear the sky-
echoing slogans and promises anymore
like noise to a deaf-mute
can’t hear the screaming bullets 
can’t feel the fear of approaching tanks 

I no longer recognize
those infant faces anymore
hungry and thirsty souls of the dead rush to mother’s
breasts yet cannot suck one drop of milk

I no longer recognize time anymore
I can’t distinguish day from night
trapped in ten thousand years of history
a falling star unable to find its own grave

 

2

Power, an agreement between the market and the soul
Bloodstains washed clean with money
Spiritual devastation
decoration for the executioner’s celebration
The massacre began with bloodshed
and continued with the feast of flesh, chaos of scraps
Honesty and dignity
maternal love and compassion
skinned carcasses

Glittering city streets and pleasuring crowds
grow in consummate depravity
SARS virus sprays out in droplets
spreads through the air
An asthmatic nation
cannot breathe in spring

Guilt and disgrace stretch into this century
like a flowering brocade
Shout out the slogan “revitalize our great nation”
Lift up the sign “boycott Japanese goods”
Hum the too cool boy-band F4
Riot, throw bottles and rocks at the “Japanese dwarf-bandits”
Then randomly make some coy children sing
in unison at the command of the Qin Shi Huang-president,
“Grandpa Premier Lien Chan, you’ve come back home!”

The cruel spring day 16 years ago
has been draped in fashionable patriotism
that perpetuates the cruelty

 

3

The darkness is water
existing without the slightest crack 
as an ocean of lies
The dead souls are light
that occasionally flares
but still pierces through  
 
As the terror and forgetting wreak havoc
a group of mothers who’ve lost their children
to the insanity of the times
carry out the final testament to insanity
Seeking each grave the ones with white hair
bring the ones with black hair the eye’s last glimmer 
Whenever they’re about to collapse
the young dead-darkened souls
hold up the white-haired mothers  
to walk the road where even tears are shadowed