Yang Ze (Yang Tse), pen name of Yang Xianqing, was born and raised in Jiayi in southern Taiwan. He graduated from the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, National Taiwan University, and went on to earn a Ph.D. in comparative literature from Princeton University. After a brief stint of teaching at Brown University, he returned to Taiwan to assume the chief editorship of the literary supplement to China Times.
Yang was a member of the National Taiwan University Poetry Society and published his first book of poetry in his senior year. With three books of original poetry to date, Yang has exerted significant influence on younger poets.
—TO JETHRO TULL
The window’s shadow keeps moving, dusk, six o’clock
the bugle call returns on time from the hunting woods
the silvery-white bugle call—and the dead
baron, will he feel all this? The sound of people, of horses
all of it quickly filtered by twilight. As this is a fugue
of violence and music, I faintly hear
candles moving, and nails being hammered into a coffin at midnight.
From afar I see that at dawn, on the grass in the cemetery,
people are reenacting the dead baron’s funeral
the lute strings’ excitement and their grief: this is a minstrel singing—
This is a minstrel singing: it makes the land sink into the sea, and the sea
sink into wasteland, and on the wasteland grows the rose’s song
violence and hammering, a melancholy hammering, like a bugle call—
as desolate, as entreating, as futile: flute, triangle, electric guitar.
This is one part of singing, this is all of
existence—all of joy, all of misery
all of spring, all of love …
The window’s shadow keeps moving, dusk, six o’clock
I sit down to wait, embracing deathly stillness even more complete.
Night, solid as a castle, solid as death itself, is about to
soar and sway in the chime of evening prayer; but love,
let love not think about these things. Time is but
a wounded migrant bird in the bell’s sudden, formidable embrace
knocked down into our loving hands.
On love, and on time, by the light of the flames
let me write you a song:
faith, dreams, distant civilization; let my explanations
be one with the short month of May, the bright and beautiful
month of May….
(1977)
(translated by Maghiel van Crevel)
UNDER A SCORCHING SUN, A STIFLING NOON, I STARED
Under a scorching sun, a stifling noon, I stared—
at my shadow on the asphalt road, thinking and crying
madly walking, oh, like a city with sunstroke
groaning and moaning beside a fire truck’s foam …
Because these are years lived in the wind, flying
dust in your eyes and mine
brews tears. At dusk
I stand at the skyscraper’s windows, and see
a great crowd of people just like me
dragging a useless body, hurriedly walking
at dusk, discontented with all of reality.
I feel as if trekking in solitude through a desert of old,
dust is flying, I am like a minister in exile
trekking in solitude through a desert of old …
Because these are years lived in the wind, in the wind I
hang my head, I shed tears: “Even if
the sages were to return, they could not
deliver me from this pressing grief …”
Under a fierce and scorching sun, I stared—
my soul floating upward and dispersing like blue smoke in the air
“Endless showy flowers on Cold Food Road
A scented carriage tied to the tree outside someone’s house.”
Because these are years lacking in faith,
I madly walk, oh, like the sages of old:
a city with sunstroke groaning and moaning beside a fire truck’s foam …
(1977)
(translated by Maghiel van Crevel)
THIS IS THE SPRING OF CYNICISM
this is the spring of cynicism; we
hide ourselves in the folds of a dry, cold smile
carrying fake flowers from walks taken with our lovers
(In Liverpool, someone hangs himself with a white necktie; but what
has that to do with me?)
this is the spring of cynicism, we
wake up in the middle of the night to sob like children, in spite of ourselves …
I’ve been to a few of General X’s dinner parties
cautiously, humbly bearing in mind my age and status, and soon—
I got to know everyone in the city
(this is possible, in China: a poet I know sold his surplus personality
for a position as a lowly government clerk …)
this is the spring of cynicism—but there’s no dearth of delight:
demons from hell like Oxhead and Horseface, dog-mouth ivory
I am busily erasing mottos that will make people blush from every book
busily sticking Band-Aids on the injured eyes of every mirror
but I hear a seemingly cynical voice that says:
“There is more between two points than just a straight line
for our ideals, My Child, we exercise restraint and give way
give way, go around and still advance …”
(on the bank of the Congo sits a sleigh—sits a sleigh,
for no reason at all …)
(1977)
(translated by Maghiel van Crevel)
autumn freshness in the human world, a rainy day
and in the evening twilight one cannot but sigh wistfully
aimlessly standing at a bus stop on the way home, looking
at buildings under construction across the street, while in that light rain
one lonely mercury streetlight after another lights up
two, three gaudily dressed women walk by through the rain at dusk
lips pursed, racing to meet their appointment with life
on a red brick road where no sages will come back to life, I glimpse
someone sucking on a Kent cigarette with lowered head
time, stunned and inauthentic, is like
a huge diamond ring on the ring finger
wet and glimmering in the rain
overnight, that man’s hair and beard turned gray; I
am lost among roadside dynasties, full of untimely feelings …
the city night explodes in a wild burst of nearby rock ’n’ roll
and in neon-red rain I am shot dead by billboard stars
the world is sinking in a sea change
all the way down into the center of the evil night
someone stoops to pick up her lipstick
I realize that your and my city
left lying at the roadside
is a cigarette butt that won’t be lit again
(1978)
(translated by Maghiel van Crevel)
when night disappears at the entrace of the alleyway
the sunlight smells as if it’s slow in coming, outside
the French windows, between the bushes that line the street
and the parked cars
there’s a woman hawking
steamed stuffed buns in a local accent
as people’s reflections in car windows walk on
a generous, gentle breeze strokes the branches, behind a wall
the ground is covered in flower petals
waking up from a dream at noon, in between
days to come and days gone by
two young women that no one knows
walk past a green mailbox on a street corner
when, oh when will the lotus bloom?
it will bloom in March.
and if not in March, then when will it bloom?
school’s out, and three girls race ahead
red hats, yellow schoolbags, white socks
hair in braids flying under a clear sky
but the way of the sages has truly never
once been practiced in this world
(1978)
(translated by Maghiel van Crevel)
outside is the snow
is the snow fluttering and flying
the snow that loves the roaming life like I do
whose wandering the earth has led to regret
outside is the snow of a strange land
outside is the snow
is rain and snow riding each other
the rain that loves to cry like you do
whose disenchantment with the world has led to awareness
outside is the snow of a foreign country
outside is the rain is the snow
is rain and snow that rustle
in the eaves and gutters of strangers
on the closed road by the lake
outside is the fierce rain and snow of spring
outside is the rain is the snow
is rain and snow thick and fast
desolate rainstorms like your eyes
foggy snowstorms like my forehead
rain and snow that reach back to previous lives
“in wild confusion, now joined and now parted”
not afraid to turn to mud we go down
and in the dream arrive anew
on that evil earth, our home …
(1983)
(translated by Maghiel van Crevel)
People of Taipei on your way home at night:
should you find yourselves tripping over me in pitch-black dreamless arcades
please dispel all doubts, the one lying there drunk is indeed me
(1990)
(translated by Maghiel van Crevel)
Life is not worth living.
Before today, I have perhaps
already felt a sense of foreboding.
Before today, before the moving pattern
on your skin, like that of a young animal, before
the quince in the dark
the highly perfect terrace and stars
before the night—the night of the magic flute
and the unicorn that belongs to all lovers:
when the magic flute shrieks
when it shrieks through the rooms and finally cools down
and the bugle call returns to that very last
that very first dawn over the plains …
Life is not worth living.
Before today, I’ve had that feeling.
Before today, before my being relative
and your being absolute—like the wild hare’s
sincere, courageous, passionate love instinct
and then (making it hard not to doubt you)
a many-sided, impure temperament
that tends toward the sentimental, that tends toward speed
and toward an illusion-fostered
bit of indulgence and madness.
Life is not worth living at all.
Long before today, before books,
music, and painting—right from the start
I’ve had that gloomy feeling.
Green light, blue roses
spliffs, and Zen,
I dream of you: scooter girl
acting like the headless rider from a painting
carrying your thick black hair, racing
away toward dawn over the plains …
And when the magic flute shrieks
when it shrieks and finally turns cold
the magic potion of love and death is but
like sunset over the ocean—
eternal violence
and madness …
Life is not worth living.
Before the elephants running on the shore
and the ocean and the distant sky grow old together:
a young animal darkly licking its wounds
only to safeguard
your sentimentality from beginning to end
I am willing to take the hilt for the knife
be an indefatigable
ever-defeated swordsman
and like a groundhog, I will
diligently go on living
although before your illusions
my nothing, before
your cave, my light—
although life is not worth living.
(1990)
(translated by Maghiel van Crevel)
a. in utterly empty and deserted streets
parasol trees shrug off their sighs
please come quick—to find me at the midnight middle-age bar
let me be your DJ
b. there’s still parking at the entrance of the alley
please come quick—to find me at the wee hours bar
let me be your DJ
c. as usual the sun will rise day and night revolving
like a giant turntable forged from melancholy
when you and I exert ourselves climbing tomorrow’s steep slopes
our field of vision is yesterday’s abyss
please come quick—to that bar, refuge of illusions
let me be your DJ
d. and still the sun will rise day and night revolving
like a giant turntable that will never grow mossy
Cat Stevens, Jim Croce, Jim Morrison
times of anger and nothingness
silhouettes of youth impatient and insane: looking back—
and the waves of life are now a thing of the past
please come quick—to find me at the bar before dawn
let me be your DJ
(1990)
(translated by Maghiel van Crevel)