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Selected Poems of Chen Li
Translated by Chang Fen-ling

[5] From
   Microcosmos
(1993)

1
He washes his remote control
with the moonbeams infiltrating
between two buildings.

6
A swift and downward glissando:
someone puts a ladder
against my childhood window.

9
It invites me into the TV set;
on the seat I stand up from,
I find a leafless metal tree.

14
I wait and long for you:
a turning dice in the empty bowl of night
attempting to create the 7th side.

16
There is someone in the autumn wind--
I mean, there's someone in the autumn wind saying
there's someone in the autumn wind.

17
Bartok, Balzac:
I strike over and over with tongue and throat
this brief and forceful secret telegram.

18
A great event on the desolate
winter day: ear wax
drops on the desk.

21
Tears are like pearls; no, tears are like
silver coins; no, tears are like
loosened buttons to be sewed back.

23
I return to my childhood school to fetch my daughter,
thousands of similar children rush out of the playground:
a butterfly lost in the garden of mirrors.

26
From the cup I drink the tea you pour for me,
from the cup I drink the spring chill flowing down
between your fingers.

27
Joy is a hole:
tuck an object in, and out flow
fruit-like vowels.

29
A parade in honor of death:
strolling shoes working shoes sleeping
shoes dancing shoes...

30
Every street is a stick of chewing gum:
chew it repeatedly, but
don't eat it up at a mouthful.

35
What connects solitary peaks
is solitude, as well as
the glances of black birds and white birds.

38
On the night cold as iron:
the percussion music of two bodies
which strike each other to make a fire.

45
Morning of Children's Day: we hike to the cape of
time, waiting for the late-returning grandfathers
to ride back, on the setting sun, from their hiking.

46
Prisoners of silence: with speech we shatter
the transparent wall, and are forced to
nip back every piece of broken silence with our breath.

48
Aside from the bed, what other submarines
can we choose
to dive from the ocean of reality into the dream?

49
All the sorrow of night will be turned into golden
ears of rice by daylight, waiting to be
reaped by another sorrowful night.

51
A multiplication table for children of clouds and fog:
mountain times mountain equals trees, mountain times trees
equals me, mountain times me equals nothingness.

52
The sky gargles with the ocean, spits out the day's
clouds; the night gargles with stars,
spits out the glowworms that fly before your doorway.

53
Swirling rapidly into the dream like a pelota, bouncing
and bouncing,
the midnight barking.

54
The tongue is the wet root of words:
oh, stretch forward, stretch closer, to become
a secret exclamation mark in my thirsty mouth.

55
Paste the stamp right here:
what I'd like to paste is a piece of your favorite
cake, or lips.

56
Glittering around your neck is
a necklace
strung with my glances.

57
An egg: the most delicate mode of
dream; the womb of meditation
you can't bear to pierce through.

58
Opening the cage of depression:
out flies emptiness,
in flies the void.

60
In the chaotic huge maze of the world
the only support to keep from getting lost may be
the tiny flesh map you offer.

61
Mother's blue silk handkerchief:
the profound and damp starry sky of
summer night.

62
‘Which runs faster, grass or dust?’
after a spring shower, beside a deserted railway,
someone asked me.

63
Having constantly broken world records,
our lonely shot-putter throws his head out
in one put.

64
The lottery of skulls:
with the four words-- Life, Age, Sickness, Death,
you may have the latest Lover's Manual in exchange.

66
The white skin turns a mole
into an island: I miss
the glistening vast ocean inside your clothes.

67
Silent soybean milk: day after day
from my bowl to my body flows
the blank music.

68
Turn gently--oh, I fear
out of the midnight faucet might come
a baby's crying other than water...

69
Night lies there crosswise like a comb:
to comb the half-bare woods
in my body? Autumn.

70
Turn on the light, turn on
the eyes of the dead, which are imprisoned
between the wall and the furniture.

74
She isn't insane; she is a dramatic soprano
trying time after time to cut her belly open with sharp laughter
to give birth to huge amounts of suffering.

76
Sandals throughout the seasons: do you see
the free verse my two feet write, treading
upon the blackboard, upon the dust?

77
Outside the massage house they often
stretch two ropes across, to hold
a speech contest of sign language for towels of all sizes.

79
Oh, Baudelaire,
how broad and comfortable
a sofa of senses!

86
I am man,
I am a disposable lighter
in the dark universe.

87
A pomegranate, wet and green
in the rain,
seems to have something to say.

90
Violent love brought about pleasant injury:
I perspired the sweat equivalent to five boxes of grapefruit,
you had twenty-one hairs broken.

91
I like the shopping bag you left behind:
I carry in it the newly-written haiku, lemon cake,
the mountain scenes after the rain.

94
Oh, the blind men's chorus:
their faces are discordant chords
far more touching than their harmonious voices.

95
An obstinate mollusk: lodging inside
the crotch of trousers, out sometimes for a demonstration,
a pompous shell-less snail.

97
The story of marriage: a closet of loneliness plus
a closet of loneliness equals
a closet of loneliness.

98
They might be gossiping about
the setting sun--the whispering
TV antennae on the roof.

99
A rondo now forte now piano:
the flush toilets of the nihilistic republic are playing
again their mumbling national anthem...

Selected Poems of Chen Li

In Front of the Temple    Animal Lullaby       Rainstorm    
Traveling in the Family      Microcosmos      The Edge of the Island
The Cat at the Mirror

  Introduction to Chen Li's Poetry  
     by  Chang Fen-ling

陳 黎文學倉庫
Chen Li's   Literary Bank 

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