LIU WAITONG
FIVE POEMS
translated by Xiao Yue Shan
the android of autumn
it’s me.
as formulaic as fallen leaves. reconciliation a dead deity
i’m turning all the unfinished love back towards you
transmissions flow day to night. endless spiral of conduits
i plugged all the unuttered hatred into the police port
it’s me
a fugitive from the timeline of evolution
aggregating all transfigured dreams into 0.001mm rust-powder
enough to copy and paste into the propagation of thorn apples
arrival of autumn. 404 woven into the emperor’s brocade
september
i miss those beautiful people who made me long for the world
i miss also those same people who turned my world in collapse
they pitied the future of my poems
sending ceaseless misfortunes and salts
small as a sleep that has been disturbed
wide as a city sunken like sandcastles
it’s all their gorgeous intentions, their scathing teeth
stronger than the winds of umbria
i can’t resist turning the hourglass in which the moments flow retrograde
when the moon is not yet as round as an orange waiting for its division
i miss those beautiful people who made me long for the world
to snow
haven’t seen you in awhile
it all looks like you
especially the roadside fires that never burn out
my pacing, overstocked
evermore twirling half a metre upward, self
send me a mirror
send me an angled lake
best with a fox
passing through death to arrive at
a forest of birches
but even without all that it’s alright, we’re empty-handed
just like the year we first met
white fumes entwining our lips as soon as they open
pain as soon as we kiss
having nothing—it’s ecstasy
strange scriptures
the era is changing out its portrait
the people praying in st. paul’s square
switch from popes to the pope’s rejected
charcoal—he refuses holy water, preferring ashes
the twelve disciples atop the column
switch to the twelve hong kong prisoners in shenzhen
they’re not lightning rods, they’re ignited magnesium poles
clanging, roaring
tonight, even i am no longer myself
i’m a muted sandal, darting in the fallen, post-war night
who am I carrying? who am I treading upon? the distance between the galaxy and i
is the distance between me and the witch on the stake
icy dew
do the dead know everything? the dreamer knows nothing
and what is worth investigating about these nurtured bodies?
they exist for no longer than a sweeping wind
how do we listen to the rain that takes us towards the hellish famine
like pet mice using our weight and cheeks to build eden
among daisies awhirl, witches are cutting papers in a circle, sewing your clothes
There are certain poems which do not betray their innermost workings so easily; one must try at them with both hands. In the weeks and days and hours I have stayed with Liu Waitong’s work, there have been pockets of mystique, uncertainty, and as always, the certain—yet wavering—music that I have tried to capture from the distance. The conversation has drifted from my tongue to his to the thunderous murmurings of an unseen force, the flexing of the jaw of poetry itself. As an artist of incredible breadth and capacity, whose work spans many intrigues and many formats, in these poems what is most evident are the columns of his language, propping up here and there the various nature of ideas, of passion, of a brilliant mind.