Born in Shalu in central Taiwan, Su Shaolian (Su Shao-lien) graduated from Taizhong Teachers College in 1970 and has been an elementary school teacher since.
Su was a founding member of the New Tide Poetry Society in 1968 and the Dragon Race Poetry Society in 1971. In 1992 he cofounded the Taiwan Poetics Quarterly. His first book of poems appeared in 1978, followed by six more, all in the 1990s. Su is well known for his prose poetry and has also won prizes for his children’s poetry.
On the dark-green blackboard I write the character “
” and its phonetic transcription shou. Then I turn to face a whole class of primary school students and begin explaining to them what it means. After a morning of painstaking effort, they still haven’t gotten my drift, staring at me blankly and driving me up the wall. The dark-green blackboard behind me is a jungle, and there—written on it in white chalk—crouches the character “beast” yowling at me. I pick up a duster and am just about to rub it out when it dashes off into the jungle. I head off in pursuit, chasing after it everywhere until the platform is covered in chalk dust.
I come running out of the blackboard and stand there, my clothes ripped to shreds by the beast’s claws, traces of blood on my finger-nails, the buzz of insects in my ears. As I look at myself, I can’t believe what I see: I have turned into a four-legged vertebrate covered in fur. I snarl at the class: “This is what a beast is! This is what a beast is!” The students all burst into tears, terrified.
(1974)
(translated by Simon Patton)
The right hand holds a small, shiny knife. Walking away from the entrance to the alleyway, my features black as pitch, I get closer and closer to the luscious pear in my left hand with every step I take. Turning the knife, I cut on an angle to remove the peel, listening to the screams of the pear tree. Layer by layer, the pear skin falls away to reveal white, juicy flesh. A sweet smell fills the air, but the knife in my right hand is covered in blood.
In the meantime, the left hand has been fuming with rage, its five digits curled in toward the palm and pressing tightly, sunk into the flesh of the pear, squeezing hard, destroying it soundlessly. Only later do I find that there’s no pear at all—only a fist gradually unraveling like layers of peel.
(1974)
(translated by Simon Patton)
My wife lay down flat and I rolled down on top of her, wet with the ink of life. Next morning, finding a photocopied reproduction of my body, complete with scrawny limbs and a sunken chest, on the sheet beneath her, I asked: “Are you perhaps a photocopier that will reproduce my image for the rest of your life?” She burst into tears, not answering.
In the course of these nightly reproductions, my body image—subject as it was to the traumas of living—appeared to my amazement in countless layers on the bed, shriveled and misshapen. In the end, the image sat up and opened out into a very, very old me.
(1975)
(translated by Simon Patton)
On a crinkled, yellow morning, I found my name huddled with its kin of unknown skin colors in a household registry book, and held tightly by another name. I scolded that name: “Su Shaolian! Why are you holding my name?” Startled, the three-character name Su Shaolian let go, covered its face with its hands, and started weeping. Soon my name followed suit, tears wetting the household registry.
Only because there was nobody by that name did the three characters su shao lian attach themselves to my name, my nationality, my tradition, my lineage, and how wrong it was of me to abandon them!
(1975)
(translated by Michelle Yeh)
Down a gutter that runs the length of the wall, I conduct a band of late twentieth-century shadows. As each of them is reflected in the dirty water, they make a double row of shady figures walking in silent procession. They carry a coffin in which my own rapidly vanishing shadow is lying. I lead them in the funeral rites: past the doors of houses that weep, past schools that weep, past the town hall that weeps, past the weeping dawn.
Before the burial, my shadow fades in its coffin until only a mouth remains. All of a sudden, the mouth begins to speak: “You are the first person to make it into the twenty-first century, for that will be a century without shadows.” I see the last of my shadow finally disappear: my crying is all that’s left.
(1977)
(translated by Simon Patton)
On the shore, late one evening
I enter the water quietly
and swim off toward a limpid, sober land beyond the sea.
I am an accomplished swimmer, my stroke is graceful.
Stars look down wide-eyed in startled envy,
and appreciation shows on the full, round face of the moon.
I am a spirit swimming beneath the night sky.
No human being will see me.
I don’t need any experience
or a name or clothing
or heavy burdens,
because at this moment I am leaving the shore behind.
Mother, I’ve left the shore.
There are so many young men like me!
Their corpses float
all around me:
those of boys I went to school with
and those of my friends.
I have joined them—
a steady stream of tears,
a steady stream of infinite yearning.
I’m a long way from you now, shore.
You must sleep deeply.
I beg the tidewaters not to beat you,
ask the seashells not to disturb you with my messages,
implore the lights not to shake you from your rest.
You must sleep deeply
because in your embrace you hold the cities and the country.
However, all these I have left behind,
including you, shore of China.
I have drifted so far.
In the turning of the earth
the sky stays forever silent,
nor can I say anything.
I am like a floating log
or an empty bottle.
There is nothing sad about all this.
I wish myself far away,
ashore on some virgin continent.
The sea grows colder and colder
till it stops frozen on the tip of my nose.
With a smile on my face, I sink.
You, shore of China, have lost another of your people
but do not wake suddenly. Sleep deeply,
because my family lives on,
lives on, on your
surface.
(1984)
(translated by Simon Patton)
I turn over on my other side
as if to discover that horse like moonlight
slowly turning its head, wading through water toward me
it comes ashore at the far end of the bed-mat
I spend a sleepless night tossing and turning
waiting wide-eyed for its arrival
that horse like moonlight, it stands on the mat already
I spend a night of repeated dreams tossing and turning
wading through a thousand miles of water, horse hooves on the shore
should also leave the sound of their stride on my body
the thin bed-mat floats through the night
and carries me as I lie on my side
floating on water, in the night sky
with that horse like moonlight
I too can feel
that the moonlight is damp, it falls gently
drenching the mat, streaming into the water at the other end
as I lie on my side; I no longer dare turn over
for if I did
the long-accumulated, eye-brimming moonlight
would all come spilling out
let me get through the night without closing my eyes
eyes fixed on that horse like moonlight
(1998)
(translated by Simon Patton)