十月十二日

I wrote a poem when I was a junior in high school

The instructor said

Go home and write

A page tonight

And let that page come out of you

Then it will be true

So I do begin to write

First I don’t know what to write

So I sit silently for a while

And something comes to me:

Once upon a time there is a girl

But wait, it’s going to go on forever

So I stopped and think again

And this time

She dies upon the words

Tears drip down from every vessel

In her heart

Freeze, break

And she runs away from the crowd

With no expression on her face

Until she reaches the sunshine

Feels the warmth going through between her fingers

Makes her feel alive again

And then she murmurs

I’m a pond of water

With nothing more

But pure

So this is my page

Though I wonder what I try to say

另一首

I am from

I am from the country of mystery

The Forbidden City, where there are 999 and half rooms

Each with an undiscovered secret

And the Great Wall crawling on the rimless mountain

Belong to the place where I was born

I am from the country of history

Five thousand years of stories

From the invention of the explosive powder

To the launching of the first plane

Were written down by historian’s hands

And to be remembered by human

I am from the country of memory

The brutal invasion by the western countries

The death of million of Nanjing people in the Holocaust

The slaughtering Culture Revolution that sacrificed innocent people’s lives

Are not to be forgotten

I am from the country of misery

Mystery in its history

And memory in its misery