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Manoa 15.1 (2003) 15-16


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Three Poems

Hung Hung (Hong Hong)

A Hymn To Hualian

Blessed is the Lord for bestowing on us these gifts we are so unworthy
      of receiving.
The mountains of Hualian. The azure of a summer evening at the
      stroke of seven.
Deep sleep. The broad sweep of the sea tilting out of kilter on
      those hairpin
turns we take at sixty miles per hour. Love
and transgression. His injustices.
Your loveliness.

The Last Supper

I clench my fists to prevent
The wounds from breaking out in advance of the event
No one has the heart to speak up as you clasp your cigarette
Your fingers already forming the sign of the cross
But O there is a shaft of moonlight in my heart
Gleaming on the garden where you will rise from the dead
Each savory dish the skeptic sets before us is more delicious than
      the last
The love songs of the infidels outside the walls reduce me to tears
If there be a Judas among us
It must be that side of the fish not cooked to perfection [End Page 15]
With more than our fill we grow drowsy and tired
And with that quite forget the sorrow

Les Feuilles Mortes

The dead leaves
scrape across yesterday's lanais.
The violincello squeegees the car window
all through the night.
The numbers fallen from our calculations
crawl out through the crack under the door.
The rooms bellow in unison
to the now distant rain.


 

Translations by Steve Bradbury

Hung Hung is a poet, translator, and theater and film director living in Taipei, Taiwan. He was born in 1964 and received a bachelor's degree in drama from the National Institute of Art.

Steve Bradbury teaches poetry and children's literature at National Central University in Taiwan. His first volume of translation is Fusion Kitsch: Poems from the Chinese of Hsia Yu¨ (Zephyr Press, 2001).

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