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ARTS AND CULTURE

A Woman from the Provinces

  • 16 September 2014

The Mid-autumn Moon in the Lushan Mountain

At Mid-autumn, the gold coinHanging in the skyThat, for generation after generationPays for mankind’s swelling expensesOver the transparently lit night of the cities in the worldWhere the moonlight, like a piece of laminated glass, deliberately made oldIs being extorted by the cunningness of human beingsTo decorate mountains and waters on the paperIs like a shining scar

The night, looted by lightsIs publishing the terror of the animalsIn a world that, messed up by the ticking of a biological clockIs beginning to collapse, along with the years of the Great EarthquakeAnd the harvesting of tsunamis and hurricanesA fat hand of plastic truthIs controlling the bloated body of civilizationWhere the King of Death has broken the arrow of timeStaring in fury, gnashing its teeth

Tonight, though, I have run awayFrom the bright city and the bodies sunken into the high risesTo the Lushan Mountain, dressing myself up in the mirrorMy hands scooping up the flowing water-moonPure featuresWhen I raise my head, the pine branches after the rain in the mountain creekAre connected with the high skies and the far distanceThe pearls of the mid-autumnal moon, breaking from the painFall and fill the Lushan Mountain in my arms

 

A Yellow Crane Tower

Sometimes, one is more lonelythan a treethat has shed all its leavescompared with a treeall those things, big and small, that have been experiencedhave turned into withered twigsrandom, leisurely and lazywobbling in lifewith the blowing of a wind, the heaped burdensfall, soughing

Sometimes, one has to retreat backwardstaking a sip of baby chrysanthemum tea, and lotus-leave waterbending one’s rusty fingersas one moves the darkness in one’s fateas if a temptation is beginning to risestuck, as it is, in the throat, getting impatientCome, light up a Yellow Crane Towertake a deep drag before breathing it outanother deep drag, before letting it out, slowlylike breathing outthose solitudes surging, in the heart of hearts

 

Winter

This winter, still and aloofAll the ice and snow have fallen on higher placesSo white, and, oh, such whitenessI was standing at the mouth of the wind, my heart ascendingA pure soul! The snowA miracle at this higher place

Did I wrongly recognize the weatherThat I saw the snowed trees filled with pearsAs sweet and fragrant as olden daysSo many things so happyThanking the moment for being alive or dead?What incidental and bone-carving happiness!At the edge of snow-whitenessThe petals, covering me up, suddenly vanished

 

A Woman from the Provinces

This woman, from the
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