Fellows

1

the wooden bridge’s

direction is the rotten

direction of dead fish

rain dyed black by a silver lake

stone rotted to let roots clutch

loathing’s root that ivy stabs in flesh

spit out the sound of rain summer like a mouldy pelt

birdsong plunging into the starving trap of the ear

hearing turned into a breach in the dawn

everything interred in the tower sounds out in music

a madman’s sodden head floats to the surface

makes the sky fall apart again and again frenziedly stirs last night

but last night will never again pass by you

A circle of dark windows open only to one person’s pain

2

the battle is only between sound and silence

you hear the corpse opening the lid and struggling up through the soil

the final day has arrived in the end at a pallid letter

time retarded just enough to forget

declaiming in the novel accents of a blood-red bird

the dead are wakened and lose to death again

you lose to a life on a page of the score

like a wrecker lectured by the clenched teeth of the dumb

write every man-faced grass shares the winter’s flow

flesh invisibly returns

flesh has elapsed in composition gone further still now

as negating light moves from note to note

3

the door bangs shut and the inquisitor’s rage changes

a father softly explains himself not at all like a father

there’s an ear aged eleven in the tower

glued to the wall by all of its years

overhearing all the time how sound dies in sound

like silence creates a stone of heaped silence

a child stands on top of the high tower

swallows the wickedness stuffed into his little hand by dark stars

the storm stuffs a silent stomach full

this June morning pulling you back into the madman’s last night

writing out the final whistle

a tower of ageing skin so easily blown away

Translated from the Chinese by Brian Holton
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