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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 rolling dice in the empty bowl of night
attempting to turn on a seventh side

16
Someone is in the autumn wind—
I mean, someone is in the autumn wind saying
someone is 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 onto 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 a night cold as iron:
the percussion music of two bodies
that 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, to be
reaped by another sorrowful night

51
Multiplication table for kids of cloud and fog:
mountain times mountain equals trees, mountain times tree
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
White skin makes a mole
an isle: I miss the glistening

vast ocean within 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...

Books of Poems by 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     New Poems     Microcosmos II 
　

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