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  • Six Poems
  • Yang Zi (bio)

Riding a Bus Home at Night

Riding a bus home at night,I see erotic streetlights along the road,giant buildings,police in bulletproof vests.A light smell of dustand moldy food in the air.

I fall asleep on the bus.I dream that all the vehicles in the world crash into one another,all the police in the world blow their whistles.

The bus is filled with exhausted laborers,their black faces ground shiny by misery,their smilesimitate the nonexistent heaven.

Passing the city's heart,I wake up.On both sides of the road, bulldozers roarlike lunatics shaking.

Pearl River

Who will speak of it in reverent language?Who will endear it "she"?Every morning, every night,tired buses carrying half-dead peoplecross the twelve bridges.Distracted, dull eyes were cast toward it,without the slightest bit of love,as if this motionless corpse [End Page 45] has sucked the spirit from their bodies.Nobody pays attention to the ghostly white yachtand the foolish "Waterside Shangri-la."Lights on both banks are a spread of goldlike a field of rape flowers,what an expensive beauty!In summer, the suddenly risen riverwill flood the white air roots of banyansand the marble stairs of the Trade Center,will flush the floating filthto the feet of lovers.Looking at it, at the half-dead peopleswinging in the tired bussliding over the twelve bridges,I want to shovel the shameless pride off those people's faces.All we drink is this foul water.The beautiful lyric in our body has long been replacedby this devilish thing with nausea.The beautiful dream we cannot realize,the secret anguish we cannot swallowwill all flow in its armsto the sea.

Rain

Rain falls on the dry water pool,on the crow-black pebbles,on the dead pedestrians and the living statues.Rain falls on the hard flowing water like smashed silver,on the sunken chest of the end of the millennium,on the bankrupt streets,the colored lights like a cheap glass necklace on an old woman's neck.Rain falls on my desk,on my sad eye sockets.Rain falls on the industry, the agriculture and the drug business hidden deep in dark hearts.Rain falls on the innocent faces of children,on the fat cloudy faces of shrewd men,on the wasted farmland and forsaken factories.Rain falls on the thousand rooms of a huge hotel.Rain touches a young girl's breasts and thighs like an impudent hand.She is the rented lover of the wrinkled old man.He is cleaning himself up in the bathroom now.Rain falls on the shiny iron bridge, [End Page 46] on the heads and bodies of pedestrians crossing the bridge.Rain falls on the bonfire,making chi-chi sounds.Rain falls on blue, green and gold flames,on the lovers' clinging bellies,making chi-chi sounds.Rain falls on the madhouse of the end of the millenniumand the supermarket of the poorwho are wholesaling toothpastes, soaps and toilet paper.Rain falls on the necks of gentlemen and villains,on tombstones of the great and grave mounds of the nameless.Rain has an acid taste,a raw iron taste,a light fishy taste.Yet in some places,rain has a smell of tears and sperm,a smell of sick birds,a smell of filthy toilets,a smell of damp corpses.O crazy wild rain, O rain that ravages the land,where are you flushing us?

Ripples

In this absurd city,I've never heardthe rustling of leavesas the wind blows by,never seenthe ripples a pebble triggers on a pondas it draws still,never seen an angelic nurseapproaching me from the dark corridor's end,never has she touched my faceand said to me:Brother, you're okay, you're safe.

My Village

One crosses the river on a horse.One's hat is blown away by the wind.One sucks at his thumb cut by a sickle. [End Page 47] One sits in the commune yard and curses...

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