The Reed Catkins Turn White
The reed catkins, a vast expanse of whiteness,
rival the grand Dan River.
The reeds, another river,
10,000 miles of rivers know sweetness and bitterness.
They all have clear and muddy ups and downs.
On the south slope of Qinling Mountains reed clusters turn white.
Wild geese fly south. Maple leaves color with fire light.
Mountaintop frost and dew glimmers.
The warmth of autumn sun thins like the cicadas’ wings.
A ceramic pot on the old well tumbles from mountain wind.
Sheep, a whiter version of the commoners’ reeds, flock down the hill;
their little lambs are budding.
They’re joyful running
like someone’s hoop-rolling childhood.
A community with dust on their hearts takes a long journey,
blown up and down by autumn wind.
There lies the reed catkins vast expanse.
Above, the sky blues
far away from this world.
Turpan’s Grapes Are Ripe
From Shanshan to Turpan a succession of grapes.
Those who bury themselves in August, who bury themselves
in villages of crops and sheep flock,
have the brightness of grapes.
Wind is the season’s front runner:
where sunflowers blossom, where melons sweeten.
Everything has its own measure.
The red willow endows the shape of springs.
I’m startled by a group of pigeons,
flying so low so slow
with light on their wings.
From Qiketai to Lukeqin to Gaochang,
they fly like the eyes of grapes.
I want to visit a girl,
one who gifted me Uyghur language and water.
Eighteen living in a distant countryside,
where grapes adorn her windows, her door.
Kant
Of Kant,
I really don’t know anything.
I guess he was a good guy.
Otherwise so many people wouldn’t
have traveled a thousand miles to see him
ride an old train at night.
I always thought
he had a girlfriend
with blue eyes blonde hair
who’d make coffee and bread
to feed philosophy’s huge stomach.
I checked, found that he didn’t.
Kant had two things:
morality and a starry sky.
We also have two things:
desire and the gate to the gutter.
Kant and the rest of us–
all created by our own laws.
The only thing I know for sure is
we are separated from Kant by 300 years.
It’s as distant as failure from success,
and as close as wine glasses are to sorrow.
Only A Heavy Snow Grants Our Body A Rest
For three years now,
I’ve never fallen asleep early.
Even if I go to bed at nine, turn lights off at midnight,
smooth my body flat at 3 am,
nightmare after nightmare
buckles me, again and again.
Snow can fall on a person
that is invisible to others.
One year in the depths of the Qinling Mountains,
a heavy snow fell from the top,
covered all my bones.
Since then it’s never melted.
In this age where sleep has died,
only a heavy snow
grants the body a rest.
A newly deceased friend
sends us a message from the crow.
The meaning is unclear.
After hundreds of snowstorms pass, it cannot be deciphered.
Litian Road
In a certain room on Litian Road
I’ve been living. A full month gone in a blink of an eye.
For thirty days I haven’t asked about world affairs;
nor has the world ever asked anything of me.
Except on television. On occasion
I check news on my cell.
I’ve always been skeptical.
Over the years, my belief’s in a blank sheet of paper.
Litian is the most road-like road in Beijing.
In addition to wheels, it sustains footsteps.
It leads to the high-speed rail and airport,
also to a certain tile house in Shangzhou.
One morning not far from the road
I found a broken stone tablet.
The faded script recorded a specific past.
The incident happened in late autumn of 1800.
Heroes and beauties have their different origins,
but their end is roughly the same.
Either to wood or to stone,
when the play’s over, the curtain closes for all.
Last night a heavy snow fell in Beijing.
When the year ends, uprooted people return home.
It brings Litian Rd back to its nature.
The news says that Taiwan is going through a general election.
Mom said the road in front of her door is full of jujubes.
I believe both types of news to be true.
