HERE THE SEA STANDS STILL (Excerpts)
1
blue is always higher just as your weariness has chosen
the sea just as a man's gaze compels the sea
to be twice as desolate
going back as ever
to that carved stone ear where drumbeats are destroyed
where tiny coral corpses fall in a snowstorm
gaudy speckles on dead fish
like the sky that holds all your lust
go back to the limit like limitlessness
going back to the cliffs storm heads all around
your pipes doomed to go on playing
after your death tunes of corruption deep in the flesh
as blue is recognised at last the wounded
sea a million candles stands dazzlingly still
2
reality belittles the madness of poets again
a child has the right to reveal a brief death
flame brings crowds of bodies back down to zero
hate has united the ashes of early spring
thick smoke spat from stamens grows prouder still in tranquility
the pure terror of your wish
this one day has used up each day's bitter grief
when fire chokes the lung's lobes
seawater watches mother’s limbs swirl and evaporate
last year's garden is squeezed out on the sea
rising to the zenith through the blank cries of seagulls
the non-licit deaths of young children
make death understudy for spring
a chance enmity the enmity of all your future in the darkness
because of a refusal to live in this moment
3
what's drab and what's drably copied is criminal
someone living alone on a cliff is closer to the edge than the cliffs are
you are battered by a thousand tons of blue rock
eyes can't dodge the ocean's battering
what watches the day and what's stripped bare by the day
time the hard-core pornography of the dead
a fishbone polished still sharper can never be wrong
a drop of blood has diluted waters that embrace sunken ships
ivory archaic and ruthless as a balcony
trees net green shoals in their branches again
in this snow-white sickroom that white is breeding
breasts bared on rooftops gales
change each hand too gentle
the sky's legs pinned down by the bedrail
for the sea the ocean slides more dumbly in dreams
a cockroach twitches terribly like a human
what's past and what's spat out by the past is only flesh
in this reality you called to memory there's only faraway flesh
rejecting blue cliffs
the sea that rejected wings is smashed to pieces
on your face the lying biography each wave writes with light
and an eye staring at the edge is a fresh oyster
where the necrosis of last night goes endlessly back
(Tr. by Brian Holton)
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Yang Lian (1955- ), born in Bern, Switzerland, grows up in Beijing, now living overseas. He is the author of several books of poetry including Ritualization of the Soul, Barren Soul, Non-Person Singular, Where the Sea Stands Still, Concentric Circles, Riding Pisces—Poems from Five Collcctions, etc .
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