Born in Gaoxiong in southern Taiwan, Li Minyong (Li Min-yung) received a B.A. in history from National Zhongxing University. Having held various posts as teacher, journalist, and editor, he now works in the business world and lives in Taipei.
Li has been active on the poetry scene since the 1960s. He has served as chief editor of Bamboo Hat Poetry Bimonthly, president of Taiwanese Literature and Art, and president of the Taiwanese PEN. To date he has published seven books of poetry. Li is also a prolific literary critic, essayist, and translator of world poetry.
Your handkerchief sent to me from the battlefield
Your handkerchief like a flag signaling cease-fire
Your handkerchief that causes my tear marks to ever expand
Piercing the territory of my heart with the sharpness of shrapnel
Your handkerchief sent from the battlefield
Your handkerchief like a final verdict
Your handkerchief that triggers the decay of my youth
Burying me with the thundering roar of a landslide
A pale
Memento of you
A sealing tape
Across my sunken breasts
(1969)
(translated by Michelle Yeh)
Major K has no motherland
When taken prisoner of war
He declared himself stateless
On the day he was set free
As people from his motherland drew near
He silently wished
To put himself in their hands
Armaments are forbidden
Armaments are not forbidden
There is no motherland anymore
The motherland is still here
Major K has been made the subject
Of an experiment in dual cognition
One day sooner or later
It will be your turn or mine
Quietly the world wipes its tears
Quietly the world wipes its tears
(1973)
(translated by Denis Mair)
Our search is for words that have not been ruined
To pursue the genuine in a false land
Power is a ringleader who compels
The wraiths of politics to twist our language
With deliberate care
We clear a place for each injured word
And let words join into a force of resistance
Let language come to life again
So we may have sufficient strength
To capture the doers of harm
(1990)
(translated by Denis Mair)
Within the black box of power
The army conducts its ceremonies of rule
Shadows of rifles and cannons
Suppress the land and people
Shaken until it tilts, the island
Raises a battle cry in the storm
A republic of dreams is sprouting
Watered by blood and tears
(1990)
(translated by Denis Mair)
The newspaper
Carries news of a criminal executed by firing squad
Popping of rifles
In the glimmer of dawn
A body falling to the ground
Blood spills on the ground where the criminal fell
The blood
Is quickly covered by triggermen
But the blood has soaked in
And become one with the ground
On that spot one death sentence after another
Has already been carried out
The spilled blood has been clotted
Giving the dirt a red-brown color
Making the dirt thirsty for more blood
Because of this thought
My hands begin to tremble
The newspaper falls
I see blood flowing from its pages
Clotting on the floor
Whose blood is it waiting for?
This apparition of blood on the floor?
I ask myself
But the cold floor acts as if nothing happened
The newspaper rests on its silent surface
(1991)
(translated by Denis Mair)
READING POEMS ON A LATE-NIGHT AIRLINER
Returning home from my travels
Flowers pressed in my passport go between pages of a book
Pressed on my heart is the mark of a far land
Sunset highlights fir trees at a field’s edge
Nighttime on an airline flight
Carefully reading poems by Szymborska
Some people only like common poems
She says
I am another type of person
I hear a deer running fleetly in the book of poems
A hunter runs in pursuit
Through a forest that hides reality
Szymborska is a Polish poet
I am a poet from Taiwan
By means of translation
We hold a conversation in poetry
I use the language I write in
To read the lines of her poem
“Forgive me, distant war
Forgive me for taking these fresh flowers home.”
“Forgive me, gaping wounds
Forgive me for this scratch on my finger.”
I open the porthole cover
Look for small stars in the night sky
Beneath a certain little star
Szymborska brings clumsy words alive
By light of that same star
I dream of a new land
With the power of poetry
We attempt a kind of revolution
When consciousness is awakened
Who says it is not possible?
“Maybe the weight of a single poem
Can tilt the earth.”
A departed woman poet from Taiwan
Gives encouragement with these lines.
But my countrymen
Are more fond of haughty words
Fast asleep on an airline flight
Their usually silent mouths are open
Each of them a fallen tree
A forest moving through air
(1997)
(translated by Denis Mair)