Luo Men (Lo Men), men meaning “door,” is the pen name of Han Rencun, who was born on Hainan Island and graduated from the American Civil Aviation Research Center in China. For many years he worked for the Civil Aviation Bureau, Ministry of Transportation, and is now retired. He lives in Taipei with his wife, Rongzi; their home is well known as “House of Lights.”
Luo Men published his first poem in the Modern Poetry Quarterly in 1954. He is a long-time member of the Blue Star Poetry Society and has served as editor of its journal. He has received numerous literary awards, including “The First Literary Couple” with Rongzi from the Philippines. To date he has published eleven books of poetry and five volumes of essays.
THE FOUR STRINGS OF THE VIOLIN
At childhood, your eyes are like the azure sky.
Grown up, your eyes are like a garden.
At middle age, your eyes are like the rough ocean
Now that old age has arrived, your eyes become the home of sadness,
Silent like the theater after curtain-fall deep in the night.
(1954)
(translated by Shiu-Pang Almberg)
A postcard flown in
Made twelve-year-old Tron walk up the steps leading to the clouds
While the priest trod on the red carpet
And the bullet in a beeline darted
If it had been a thin cloud skimming across the lake
It would have skimmed forth a sort of smile on Tron’s face
If it had been a single wing flying in from the green fields
It too would have flown into Tron’s birdlike age
But when the swing rose, a rope snapped
And the whole azure sky tipped in behind the sun
The swing did not complete the pirouette on the skating rink or the ballet stage afar
But got ground like a gramophone disc under the broken needle
Author’s notes: Tron was a little Vietnamese girl whose leg was blown off by shrapnel during the Vietnam War, as reported in the December 1965 issue of LIFE.
(1965)
(translated by Shiu-Pang Almberg)
Pushing hard my hands flow like a current
Forever myriad hills and rivers
Forever eyes that cannot turn back
My gaze afar
Turns you into a bird with a thousand wings
Forsaking the sky no longer on your wings
My listening
Turns you into a flute with a thousand stops
Its sound reaching as far as eyes gazing into the past
Pushing hard I get trapped and locked up
In transparency
(1972)
(translated by Shiu-Pang Almberg)
Raising its forelegs like lightning
Producing a peal of thunder
It then put them down
And what came
Was a spatter of rain
That chased the winds
Galloping in through the landscape
Rushing out through the landscape
Except for the horizon
It has never seen any rein
Except for mountains where clouds and birds sit
It has never seen any saddle
Except for rainbows in the sky and rivers on earth
It has never seen any bit
Except for the smoke in the bleak desert
It has never seen any whip
At the very thought of the stable
It would tear even the wilderness asunder
At the very thought of vastness
All its four legs would be wings
Mountains and rivers take flight together
Where the hooves land flowers cover the ground
When the hooves lift stars cover the sky
(1975)
(translated by Shiu-Pang Almberg)
Light has no wall around
Nor has light’s abode
The house of light is only a place on the deck
Traveling through time and space
It carries nothing but
An art gallery in its eyes
And a concert hall in its ears
Thus its hands can be free
To embrace the earth
Its feet can relax on the horizon
Its head can rest high in the starry sky
Turning the world into wandering clouds
Floating past with the flow of light
The moon is the dam
The sun is the shore
Go up and you’ll find the very home of light
(1979)
(translated by Shiu-Pang Almberg)
In the lens-grinding workshop of the sun and the moon
I can clearly see
The road running away from streets and lanes
And wilderness coming to meet it
The tree running away from the potted plant
And woods coming to meet it
The bird running away from its wings
And skies coming to meet it
The man running away from his name card
And haze and clouds coming to meet him
The road and the tree the man and the bird
Running away en bloc
And the horizon fetching them all back on a leash again
(1979)
(translated by Shiu-Pang Almberg)
THE OLD MAN SELLING FLOWER POTS
Every day
He pushes a cartload of years
To display for sale at the entrance of the lane
Sitting outside the pots
Vacant for thirty-odd years, he too is
An old flower pot
Staring at the flowers and the soil of his native land
Birds of paradise bloom on rooftops
Clouds unfold at the horizon
Eyes open in distant views
At a peal of police sirens
He leaves, pushing the ever-heavier wheels
Someone saw him whistling lightheartedly
Rolling an iron hoop
(1981)
(translated by Shiu-Pang Almberg)
The sky is drowned in the square urban well
Hills and rivers dry up outside the square aluminum windows
What shall eyes do?
The eyes look out
Through the cars’
Square windows
And find rows of square windows
Of high-rises
Staring back
The eyes look out
Through the rooms’
Square windows
And find rows of square windows
Of apartments
Staring back
Eyes fail to look out
And windows too are blind
On square walls
They can only resort to dining tables
And mahjong tables
To look for square windows
Searching here and there they all find
Their escape at last
In the square window
Of the TV set
(1982)
(translated by Shiu-Pang Almberg)
He leans against the apartment window
Watching umbrellas in the rain
Move into many
Solitary worlds
He comes to think of a huge crowd
Every day with tides of people
Going from buses and subways
Holding themselves, to go home and hide
Behind closed doors
Suddenly
All the rooms in the apartment
Run out into the rain
Shouting aloud that they are
Also umbrellas
Astonished he stands
Tightly holding himself like an umbrella
Nothing but the sky is an umbrella
Rain falls inside the umbrella
Outside there is no rain
(1983)
(translated by Shiu-Pang Almberg)
If the bluebird didn’t come
How could the woods and fields under the spring sun
Fly into gorgeous April?
If not for June, treading a trail of blossoms
And radiance, that in flame has become
Cremated into that phoenix,
How could summer at one stretch of its wings
Turn the maples on both hills all red
And hand over all brilliance and beauty to autumn?
The swan on the quiet dusky country
Has left behind the last petal of pure white
To light up the sweet gentle winter
Grab a handful of snow
A handful of silvery hair
A handful of light from mutually gazing pairs of eyes
All being rivers flowing back to April
And poetry sent back to April
Postscript: With the chimes from your childhood memories, at 4 o’clock in the afternoon on Thursday, April 14th, 1955, we trod along the red carpet in church, treading the light in the house of light and entering the long long years of poetry. All I would like to say to you from the bottom of my heart is in this poem.
(1983)
(translated by Shiu-Pang Almberg)
READJUSTMENT OF TWENTIETH-CENTURY SPACE FOR EXISTENCE
Apartments and country places
Sit at the extremes of freeways
And stare at each other
Going on in this deadlock
Is not as wise as slowing down
For the mountains have hilltops
Houses have rooftops
And heaven would not give in to anyone
Nor be lower than anyone
No way
Those were the words of birds and planes
On their way up there
In the days to come
As long as the freeways
Are thoroughfares
There will be people bringing their idyll into town
And people driving their city to the country
Since soil and carpet have walked into
The same pair of shoes
And landscape and cityscape are equally pretty
In the same pair of eyes
Everybody will crowd into the TV set
Not knowing each other
But becoming faces all the more familiar
(1983)
(translated by Shiu-Pang Almberg)
WHO COULD PURCHASE THE HORIZON?
Pull over here
All the rays, shining here and there,
From the sun, the moon, the stars, and the lamps.
Pull over here
All the routes, running here and there,
Of cars, ships, and planes.
Pull over here
All the lines, straight and curved, drawn here and there
By painters’ hands.
Pull over here
The views and visions hither and thither
In everybody’s eyes.
All, pulled and gathered,
In the end
Is no more than that vast horizon going afar
Leading heaven and pulling earth
On a leash
(1991)
(translated by Shiu-Pang Almberg)