3 poems from The Rose of Time: New and Selected Poems by Bei Dao

UNTITLED

Stretch out your hands to me
don't let the world blocked by my shoulder
disturb you any longer
if love is not forgotten
hardship leaves no memory
remember what I say
not everything will pass
if there is only one last aspen
standing tall at the end of the road
like a gravestone without an epitaph
the falling leaves will also speak
fading paling as they tumble
slowly they freeze over
holding our heavy footprints
of course, no one knows tomorrow
tomorrow begins from another dawn
when we will be fast asleep

~

DECLARATION
for Yu Luoke

Perhaps the final hour is come
I have left no testament
Only a pen, for my mother
I am no hero
In an age without heroes
I just want to be a man

The still horizon
Divides the ranks of the living and the dead
I can only choose the sky
I will not kneel on the ground
Allowing the executioners to look tall
The better to obstruct the wind of freedom

From star-like bullet holes shall flow
A blood-red dawn

~

COMPOSITION

stars in the stream and stops at the source

diamond rain
is ruthlessly dissecting
the glass world

it opens the sluice, opens
a woman's lips
pricked on a man's arm

opens the book
the words have decomposed, the ruins
have imperial integrity

http://www.amazon.com/Rose-Time-Bilingual-Directions-Paperbook/dp/0811218481/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1296543172&sr=1-1

I'm reading so many stunning poems by Bei Dao.

From the Preface of The Rose of Time: New and Selected Poems by Bei Dao

“I was born in 1949 in Beijing. As Chairman Mao declared the birth of the People’s Republic of China from the rostrum in Tiananmen Square, I was lying in my cradle no more than a thousand yards away. My fate seems to have been intertwined with that of China ever since. I received a privileged, but brief, education. I was a student at the best high school in Beijing, until the Cultural Revolution broke out in 1966. All the schools were closed, and three years later I was assigned to work in the state-run construction industry. I worked as a concrete mixer for five years, and then another six years as a blacksmith. This experience of hard labor, living at the bottom of society, eventually helped me a great deal. It broadened my understanding of life in a way that was tangible and material, something that books could hardly be capable of achieving.

It was under those harsh circumstances of life that I began my creative writing. I finished the first draft of a novella, Waves, in a darkroom, while supposedly developing photos for a propaganda exhibition about the construction site. That was one of the grimmest periods of contemporary China, when reading and writing were forbidden games. But underground creative writing was breaking through the frozen shell of the earth.

On December 2, 1978, I, together with some friends, launched the first non-official literary journal in China since 1949, Today. The “misty” or “obscure” poetry – a pejorative term applied by the authorities – that appeared in Today was able to challenge the dominance of the official social discourse by opening new space, new possibilities for the Chinese language. Inevitably, the journal was banned after two years of its existence, but it began a new phase in the history of Chinese literature.

Berlin in 1989 marked the beginning of my life in exile. For the next four years, I lived in six countries in Europe. Today was revived in 1990, and has continued to be published abroad ever since. It remains the only Chinese avant-garde literary journal whose existence transcends geographic boundaries. As its chief editor, I have been engaged, alongside writers within China, in a long-term literary resistance – not only to the hegemony of the official discourse, but also to the degree of commercialization throughout the world.  A once-mimeographed journal floating across the oceans has managed to survive in environments where other languages are spoken.

In truth, I am not quite confident about my writing when I look back. It reminds me of those days of blacksmithing, when I was frustrated by the iron works I had made. I realize that a poet and a blacksmith are much alike: both of them chase after a perfect dream that is unrealizable. I once, in an early poem, wrote the lines: “freedom is nothing but the distance/ between the hunter and the hunted.” It is the predicament, as well, of writing poetry. In this sense, you are both hunter and hunted, but poetry is the distance like freedom.”

I am currently reading Nameless Flowers, a book of poetry by Gu Cheng.
Here is a poem from the book:

Love Me, Ocean

I have no gills.
I can't go to sea.
         - Alberti

love me, Ocean
I quietly say
come to the mountains

in the curved troughs of waves
there are only questions
water drops for an instant
magnify the setting sun

love me, Ocean

my shadow
is twisted
I'm hemmed in by the land
sound paves over
the glacial scars
only my gaze
freely reaches
the sky
to find your breath
the wind, an expanse of pale blue

love me, Ocean

the blue gets deeper as
deep as dreams
without edges
without rusting shorelines

love me, Ocean

though the stream's call awakes me
the treetops keep recalling
your song
everything returns to
the most beautiful moment
shining scales, rainbows
on butterfly wings
autumn leaves drifting into sighs
green canes and blind snakes
calmly enwrap me

love me, Ocean

who's that walking in the distance?
it is the pendulum
hired by Death
to measure out life

love me, Ocean

the city's
countless stubborn shapes
try to tame me
with metallic coldness
laughter and scorn
bland thoughts
turn bitter
salt crystalizes
in black hair and pupils
but --

love me, Ocean

wrinkles, roots' footprints
knit a net
to ensnare me
where is the mark of the wave's kiss?

love me, Ocean
a coarse bit of gravel
murmuring in the mountains

http://www.amazon.com/Nameless-Flowers-Selected-Poems-Cheng/dp/080761548X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1296542138&sr=1-1