For My Daughter And Another & For One Song And A Hundred Songs
“To sing a song/The guard with an electric baton in his hand/Ordered me to sing 100 songs.” Liao Yiwu, a prominent poet, reportage writer and folk musician, was arrested for publishing his long poem Massacre and other works to commemorate the Beijing Massacre of 1989, and later sentenced to four years imprisonment on counter-revolutionary propaganda and incitement.
Photo: Katherine GuUnsplash
For My Daughter and Another
Let me sit into a corner
In a prayer room in my fantasy
And with hands cuffed behind my back
Make the sign of the cross for you
Miaomiao, my daughter
A little thing constantly poking your head out
I eat you from the dust every day
The cement dormer splits the moon piece by piece
I have seen you
From the misty mountains or saddle
Falling
The rider falling down like a sharp axe
Hacks more, instant pain into me
The broken arms
My two boats bleeding like fountains
Where are they drifting tonight
Where are boats there is water
Water! Ah, water
Water cannot be held
Nor locked with shackles
Water cannot be beaten with the fists, boots, ropes
And sticks to get on the ground
Water
A substance of crafty nature
A statement unable to break through repeated attacks
A criminal unable to sentence
Ah, water
A semi-translucent dance
A freely relaxed body overflowing
A king’s knife
As a woman flooding over a man
Makes human rust
Coming to naught
Naught
Simmers my daughter’s amniotic fluid
Flowing from the internal organ of the universe
And from the bell of origin in swinging sheets
The humming iron gate is brimming with tears congealing on it
Rusty
Like the face of the grandfather buried long ago
When the cage is to submerge into the riverbed
Will a string of children
Carry the glistening grass on their heads and get up, or not?
My daughter
In the river mud you are chewing
Is there any scream from your father?
(1 July 1991)
For One Song and a Hundred Songs
To sing a song
I want to wear out my ears
To sing a song
The guard with an electric baton in his hand
Ordered me to sing 100 songs
Get out of the cell
The shadow
An unreliable lover
Leaped like a rabbit onto a large wall
My shaved head is the tumour growing at the foot of the wall
The rain is tears from the whole kingdom of Heaven
Drained from my eyes to blind me
My tongue was shaking a white flag
Tinnitus
I heard the screams of the spittle
Like a fish or bird put into a pan with boiling oil
The sun is sowing the garlic to the dark blue
Erupting in air the choking breath
Still want to sing
Still want to sing
Forgive me
Forgive me
Let me be your earwax
To be taken out by you
Spread on your palm for your interest
I swore to make you comfortable
The pleasure of shivering
Was second only to ejaculation
In the golden blizzard
The earwax brayed
─ I would like to take off my pants to show you
I would like to be naked
To show Van Gogh huddled in the soul
The red-haired ghost guarding Hell’s door
Was bleeding from his ear cavity
I would like to become a carious tooth
To fuck your nerves to be swollen from within
I would sit and stare at your left cheek
To slowly bulge as the pregnant woman's belly
The dentist would use the midwife’s forceps
To pull me
From your noble mouth
At that time I would sing for you
And never stop singing for you
─ This world is
A wonderful spittoon
This world is
A bottomless spittoon
(1 December 1990)
Photo: Max Zhang/Unsplash