Born in Taiwan but now dividing her time between Paris and Taipei, Xia Yu (Hsia Yü) is the author of four volumes of poetry. She first came to public attention in the mid-1980s with the appearance of Memoranda (1983), a self-published and self-designed collection of poems whose iconoclastic tone struck a deeply sympathetic chord in Taiwan’s younger readers. Her other volumes, which she also designed and published herself, include FRICTION.INDESCRIBABLE (1995), a Dada-esque montage of found poems made from cut-up words and phrases from the poems in her second volume, Ventriloquy (1991); and her newest collection, Salsa (1999).
Xia Yu received a B.A. in film and drama from National Arts College and has worked in television and the theater. She now makes her living as a song lyricist and translator.
I’ll take your shadow and add a little salt
Pickle it
Dry it in the wind
When I’m old
I’ll wash it down with wine
(1980)
(translated by Andrea Lingenfelter)
It’s only so that I can store up enough love
enough gentleness and cunning
just in case it happens that when I awaken I see you
It’s only so that I can store up enough pride
enough solitude and indifference
just in case it happens that
when I awaken you have gone
(1980)
(translated by Andrea Lingenfelter)
a little later it’s peppermint
a little later still it’s dusk
deep in a cave is buried a piece of bronze
to ward off
something
grown more corrupted with each day
(1981)
(translated by Andrea Lingenfelter)
On Poet’s Day
the one thing I don’t want to do
is write poetry
My hair needs cutting
I need to put away my winter clothes
I want to work on writing a letter
and give some thought as to whether or not I really want to get married
Better yet, I could take a mid-day nap
The rush mat is cool like peppermint
Or should I have children?
The room has a particular odor
magnolias, apricots
L. Cohen
blends with his guitar:
“Your enemy is sleeping
But his woman is awake …”
He can help me finish eating these dumpling wrappers
and the whites of these salted duck eggs
He looks really good smoking a cigarette
He likes to tell jokes
But there have to be better reasons than those
Dear Ladies and Gentlemen
I shouldn’t shed any more tears over it
The globe
is already 70 percent covered in seawater
Plus, the water in the kettle is boiling
First I’ll brew a cup of tea
He phones:
“Hey, let’s do something exciting!”
Soft
pleasing to the palate
easily digested
his lips
the words he says
But the water is boiling
and first I have to brew a cup of tea
“To have red snapper from the Egyptian Nile
I’d rather be a woman in this life”
It’s just a commercial
and besides I have to take a bath first
In short
poetry seems frivolous
and besides
it’s kind of boring
(1982)
(translated by Andrea Lingenfelter)
—FOR MY FATHER
Father is having his beard shaved
The corners of his mouth have already darkened
I don’t have the heart to remind him
He is already dead
Throughout the night we listen to Bach and keep vigil
is favorite Bach
We take him up to a high and windy place
Carrying out an arid, elaborate ritual
Give him a broad-brimmed hat, a juniper staff
Give ourselves clothing of hemp
Assemble in orderly ranks
Take him up to a picnic at a high and windy place
Take him up to a picnic in a high and rustic place
Kindle a bonfire, burning meager deliverance
I try to tell him, try to please him
“This really isn’t the worst thing,” “the return to immense solitude,
Utter annihilation,” without worry of impediment
Without terror
He is docile and obedient too
He was ill too long, forcing himself to hang on
Like a battered old umbrella
Water dripping down
“Life is nothing but suffering.”
I lie. I am twenty-four years old.
He should understand better than I, and yet
It’s as if, fainter even than breathing,
I hear him say:
“I understand, but I’m afraid.”
Faint, like eyelids
Fluttering shut. I speak of it
In aesthetic terms, this most mysterious portion of the universe
The one and only subject of poetry …
…“Now, do you remember how
when I was seven, I wanted you
to buy me a parachute?”
I was always straying off the subject
And then forgetting to come back
He waited, waited a long time
He said: “I’m afraid.”
I can’t go with him
My tactful explanation
He is lying down, never to speak again
He understands
In the past he didn’t understand, the first time I
Refused, at thirteen
Because I was growing up fast and shy
Felt inadequate, fell farther and farther behind
We went to buy books.
An eccentric girl
Fond of art …
Everyone comes back
Holding a white handkerchief
Except him. He alone
Is left behind
Freshly shaven
Never to speak again
Carrying on a silent
Eternal picnic
(1982)
(translated by Andrea Lingenfelter)
When I’m a hundred years old,
I will squat in a corner in the dingy room
and write a weak, sentimental letter:
“I’m so destitute
and I keep gaining weight—
an eternal
pure contradiction!”
When I’m a hundred years old,
I will let the world climb into my lap
to do a perfect handstand,
even though we won’t achieve better understanding
because of this.
I will still remember my funeral,
which will take place when I’m a hundred and one.
The world will be at the beginning of a new civilization
and tend to be conservative, untrusting.
I will hear someone say:
“She looks more honest now.”
Dream is the shortest distance between two points,
dream is the truly smart one.
An aging surrealist,
I will fall asleep smiling.
But according to them, that is death.
My burial clothes will be too big, my casket too small,
the plot they give me will have too many ants …
All those men will come
whom I once loved,
some holding umbrellas,
others shedding tears.
(1983)
(translated by Michelle Yeh)
THE HIDDEN QUEEN AND HER INVISIBLE CITY
In her kingdom, one
outlandish map.
A kingdom composed of
fugitive bronze statues unfulfilled
deathbed wishes and promises uncovered traps
muddled clues and fingerprints being destroyed and
all of the lost eyeglasses and umbrellas, etc.
She’s drawing dotted lines on the sly, an endlessly
expanding domain.
An exhaustively categorized museum of lost objects—what could be better?
What’s more, in those moments before Fate and
History have given any sign,
she has drafted an autumn walking itinerary (destination unclear
but at every intersection a right turn)
has finished writing a light musical
fed the cat
written a letter
& tied a bow
in a heart that will never repent
(1985)
(translated by Andrea Lingenfelter)
On the day of my birthday I discovered an unfinished
parable that stopped at the end of the third paragraph but it was already clearly
a vague parable & in
the second paragraph I discovered that I didn’t know what to do next
Such a clumsy parable it lingers every day
within three feet of the top of my head. He pulls his hat down straightens
his collar, crosses the street in the rain the crowds becoming aware of the crowds
not knowing what to do next forty-two years old
On the eve of the lifting of the press ban a poem probes the question
of sensitive language. Is it really, really true that we can
brazenly use the word
“teapot”?
Exiting a movie house two men who have used the same prostitute
in different rooms both of them
now with their women on their arms they trade
a meaningful glance
(1985)
(translated by Andrea Lingenfelter)
None of them speaks
on the revolving fire truck
full of worries from afar
Suddenly I want at this moment for all of them to die
& not grow up
& grow into identical postage stamps
so that in some indistinct night
someone will forcefully tear them off
giving them furry edges
all of them saw-toothed
(1985)
(translated by Andrea Lingenfelter)
CHILDREN (2)
In moonlight the color of wolves’ fangs
the secret society made up of all of the lost children
At last all of them have pairs of roller skates
that they use to catch up to a world that’s pressing them to grow up
They have a common grave
buried in it are clothes, shoes, and gloves too small for them
Spit out a mouthful of spit, let go the kite string
Mouths wide open, they often
laugh weirdly and abruptly
cut off fingers to make vows
numberless left ring fingers
thrown away in a pleasure garden by the seashore on a winter day
When short hair is ruffled by dawn breezes they
might disdainfully tell you everything only because
an excursion they got permission to go on long ago was carelessly forgotten
on a weekday morning
The day they disappeared en masse was established
as an annual holiday
All of the children dress up as wild dogs and return
to the intersection where they were last seen to stare wide eyed
at that home to which they can never return the excursion and
the insomnia before the excursion
the photo of a missing person on a milk carton
those 100 maxims used to make them grow up
into adulthood
(1985)
(translated by Andrea Lingenfelter)
(Walking on the margins of a strange language
like a wedding dress that had been tried on
suddenly disappearing on the eve
of the wedding)
Suddenly I’d like to use a language I don’t understand at all
to express myself furthermore it’s a profound expression and also
useful for any obscure and dangerous terminology for example there’s
the Yarmidiso language family
They also use Yarmidisoese for editing newspapers compiling
children’s textbooks publishing travel guidebooks making up crossword puzzles
etc., etc.
I must commit to spend ten years’ time to understand how
to use Yarmidisoese to express affection, following the cellist
in the park home, each one using his or her mother tongue to teach the other
some common sayings and tongue-twisters
If you can steam my cold-steamed bean curd then steam my
cold steamed bean curd if you can’t steam my cold steamed
bean curd then don’t
oversteam my cold steamed bean curd—
Bean curd the incorrigible bean curd
tied with a straw rope—
Spend another ten years’ time learning how to debate with precision
and without effort, insert all manner of unexpected terminology
like certain kinds of crustaceans
that can’t conceal their claws
Spend yet another ten years and then be able to write poetry & when oleaginous
syllables press near my throat pass over the tip of my tongue
producing a pure sensory sensory sensory
joy (discover the carnal love of words):
exploring searching to use
every endearment throw away the pen smile
sigh for the part of human nature that still hasn’t been
penetrated by any language
even this beloved
this polished and refined
Yarmidisoese
(1985)
(translated by Andrea Lingenfelter)
on the subway where the wooden benches have been rubbed smooth and shiny by thousands of millions of buttocks a woman who just got off the train sits here writing in a diary occupying 1/5 of a seat she imagines I have no way to restrain myself from describing any “immediate circumstances” for example to describe the woman now sitting in the subway where the wooden benches have been rubbed smooth and shiny by thousands of millions of buttocks a woman who just got off the train sits here writing in a diary occupying 1/5 of the seat she imagines
(1985)
(translated by Andrea Lingenfelter)
after collective masturbation a row of them
sitting there reading the newspaper headlines each
evening spiders piss at the corners of their drooling mouths cockroaches
crawl over their copulating bodies laying eggs on naked
groins you know why we’re headed for extinction?
I dreamed of a dinosaur with a scornful voice
interrogating me that’s just what you’re always talking about that
collective sense of failure
(1985)
(translated by Andrea Lingenfelter)
Forget Two syllables
inside two lightly puffing cheeks
tongue tip pressed to palate gently aspirated:
Forget. Plant some daylilies
Boil soup Forget
Find a useful wall carve out a
useless hole construct a wooden frame & install
the glass soon winter snow will fall & I’ll use
glass and snow to forget forget
you
The wind probably does it best
especially as a tornado setting you down
on the floor of a phantasmagoric valley
You’ll hear someone there
playing a piccolo five holes plugged
with indecisive breath The name of the tune is
“Memories” scattered in the wind
Why not make up a new dance step? One step left
one step right three steps forward three steps back turn
around turn around turn around yeah the music suddenly
stops all of the shoes fly away all of the doors
bang shut all of the people
forget you
Come to a strange city carrying a jug
At first? It’s nothing but simple
earthenware mixed-up clay
soft heavy compressed kneaded
squeezed out wholeheartedly
to make a jug the size of the mouth
is the size of the empty space How good it is
to make a jug so as to
forget you. Or perhaps take a stroll on the bridge
May one carry a picnic basket?
Walking along the edge of the steel of the will
hopping on one foot & step by step getting close
close to you and the sea & is it enough to use an entire sea?
Somersault three times in the air
and then fall
and then die
(1985)
(translated by Andrea Lingenfelter)
Write on the body with a brush
A young body
carrying all of life’s desires
and gradually ruined
As for the brush, it’s really not a bad brush at all
Atheist and fatalist world-weary but also
promiscuous at this moment ever so peacefully
drinking almond tea
Surprisingly
there is still a little happiness
(1986)
(translated by Andrea Lingenfelter)
twenty-year-old breasts like two animals after prolonged slumber
awakening showing the pink tips of their noses
exploring yawning looking around for something to eat just as before
they’ll keep on growing up keep on
growing up growing
up
(1987)
(translated by Andrea Lingenfelter)
I turn around.
Feel Monday’s newly shaven cheeks lightly
brushing against my left shoulder
Most most beloved part
Most most important now
(1987)
(translated by Andrea Lingenfelter)
—FOR F
Between sorrow and emptiness
I choose potpourri and lavender
Dreams strictly guard secrets between them
Between words it is the same
Baskets and wings lost on a beach
They will fly up on their own
Toward the depths of a summer day
Toward a light shining from the distance
What remains is our overstimulated senses
Having squeezed out from each other’s bodies all
Of the season’s remaining juices
It’s as if we’d designated these the colors
Of happiness or of madness
Blended in various bottles
They cannot be labeled
You drill a pole into my head
At last I become your carousel horse
And then there are those enduringly patient umbrellas that still fly away in the end
After the rain they return wanting only to be a placid crowd of mushrooms
October, deeply buried in layers of cloud like memory
Before long we’ll have our first snow
But I will return to my bright and sultry island
A crocus trembles and falls, 324,000,000 live and die
I hide my face in the bottom of a well
See in the abysslike sky another self
You only search thirteen unfastened buttons
For a garden full of Korean raspberry plants
There are times when I am definitely strange and far away
As if, untouched by a man, I had become pregnant with a fawnlike child
I find an excuse to break the glass
And escape to the most distant city
How, in a strange city, do I leave a sign
Love someone or buy a pair of shoes
Slowly I lost them
Quickly I finished off a poem
That rhymed like grasshoppers
Hopping and vanishing
In a clump of summer grass
Afterward I was left with nothing
Except for a bracelet
And a red mole between my eyebrows
Except for a piece of aluminum set inside the murky night
For a long time I heard someone clearly saying
I love you
(1989)
(translated by Andrea Lingenfelter)
With my back to you, I walk on the island wearing a morning glory
With my back to you, I stare at the kudzu vines cascading from the eaves
And poking through a bamboo fence
And comb coconut oil into my freshly washed hair
With my back to you, and a guilty conscience walk away the beach far and
curved
With my back to you, I put on a brass ring
So in the night you’ll be able to reproach me for one thing at a time, while
drinking wine
Reproach me for hurriedly giving birth to my child
In a vast field of sunflowers with my back to you
For losing three buttons in the field of flowers
And gathering up all the sunflower seeds to pan-fry them
For oil
With my back to you, exiled, roaming joined a troupe of entertainers
Never again could I possibly become your impatient
Nervous wreck of a bride
With my back to you, I pay no attention to anyone not speaking
Reading an unfamiliar book
Rolling a cigarette
Drinking tea
You can still reproach me
This time when we part we can truly say it’s forever
With my back to you, I weep
With my back to you, I break into wild fits of laughter
Carelessly taking another walk across
The Eternal Youth Bridge at the eastern harbor at Pingdong
Never again can we never again can we grow old together
With my back to you in the pouring rain
With my back to you, I dance with my back to you, profligate
With my back to you, I stand beneath a tree
Very happy for no reason
Only certain of it when I’m happy
You’ll never again never again be able to reproach me
With my back to you with my back to you, I grieve
Grieving my joy
(1990)
(translated by Andrea Lingenfelter)
facing each other
our bodies
squeezed tight
a strange
almost translucent
hourglass
(1995)
(translated by Andrea Lingenfelter)
THE MERCURY THAT WE RAISED SO CAREFULLY
crossing
black ruined swings
seeping out from the borders
a drawn-out dance
pressing near the antechamber of the flesh
at six in the morning
a faint moon comes out
(1995)
(translated by Andrea Lingenfelter)
on the tongue
a crab
(1995)
(translated by Andrea Lingenfelter)
there’s not much time
circumspect small town
not without mutual destruction
about to go far away
break the glass
fingernails are translucent
(1995)
(translated by Andrea Lingenfelter)
still
kept in a fishbowl
(1995)
(translated by Andrea Lingenfelter)
| kitty | today | I heard |
| you call me | back | to a |
| mixed-up | baroque | |
| understanding | kitty | the problem |
| is my | forgetting | |
| is like a ghost | my | |
| crime is like | an opera | I |
| my lost | sleep | wilderness |
| excursions | the prob- | lem is |
| kitty my | revolving | |
| if it | were | meaningless |
| my weakness | is | |
| that regret | I | my |
| warm this | this | |
| ambivalence | kitty | |
| my twinkling | my | punch |
| is just its | ||
| most beloved fish |
(1995)
(translated by Andrea Lingenfelter)
THE RIPEST RANKEST JUICIEST SUMMER EVER
Summer sinks into the face of the clock in the eye of the cat
Sinks into chestnut-colored limbs
A 17-franc basket of peaches
Day four and already summer has run from ripe to rank
All spring long we dined as if we had all the time in the world
Followed with interest the color, light, and atmosphere
Observed the shadows of the grapevines advancing to this
Last evening of the postimpressionists
The dabs of light thicken on the hammock
Grow thin on the windblown curtain
Each stroke acquiring definition
As the last grape added bursts its skin
Must be August
Ripe for the Fauvists
Never again will mere light so delight us
And O how we weary of atmosphere
Our idle conversation spreads like vines in the arbor
In this, the ripest rankest juiciest summer ever
And O how we weary of style
Does style, after all, exist
So like the snow
Defiled at the merest touch
But even though the snow does not exist
The hammock is more manifest than ever
More than an April iris or an aperitif at six
Although compared to soccer broadcast live hardly anything exists
Our guest, an enthusiast of “Old Cathay,” asserts that in these fallen days
Only armed revolution presents so many tragic implications
And then there is soccer
O how we dine as if we had all the time in the world
Smoked salmon, crab, and lobster
And will you look at the size of this oyster
If we could but find the proper outlet and the sympathies
To release our leftist tendencies
1906, Cezanne, caught in a storm, returns to his studio
Removes his hat and coat and collapses by the window
Taking stock of the table, its overturned basket of apples, he notices
The “appleness of the apples” and their shadows, the three skulls
The wardrobe, the pitcher, the crock
The half-opened drawer, the clock
It occurs to him proportion is hardly worth making a fuss about
He will not fret over whether the table is level or not
He closes his eyes and dies
His eyelids trace a line pointing straight to three o’clock
Still, there is something wanting in all this
Must be time for Matisse
(published 1999)
(translated by Steve Bradbury)
I write a Chinese character in the palm of his hand
Making it as intricate as I can in the interest of
Arousing his interest I write it wrong so I can rub
It out and write it right from scratch stroke by seductive stroke
Drawing him into one pictographic raft after another
Until I let the air out of the raft and we sink
Into the lake until I say I love you
With neither root nor branch nor a nest to rest
I love you I love you and then I slow us down
Until we barely move at all until we come to hear
The very mesh of the gears upon our flesh
There is a cone of light that bares the fact that whoever
Invented motion pictures did so just so we could turn
Down the lights and learn to make love like this
In slow motion and in the slowest possible motion
I love you as we slowly
Dissolve into grains of light I love you
Until we then turn wafer thin
Without end O I love you
I love you
Until we come to be strangers to ourselves
So that others will come to imagine
They have seen through us
(published 1999)
(translated by Steve Bradbury)
—FOR J.W.
Gone
Still I feel those fingers
On my flesh like the slow glissando
Of a playerless piano
A brief glance
Carries us to some unearthly
Shingle surging with clouds of stars
How did we complete
Those caresses
Our naked bodies glistening
Like two dolphins embracing like two glaciers
Slipping into a sea of fire
How did we ever come to converse like this
Thus rendering those accidental cities
We just so happened to be passing through
So precisely so consummately
Antipodal
We converse so we will know that to embrace is best
And we embrace so we can descend the stairs together
Saunter by a theater, casually buy our tickets
And enter to see a show so we will know
We are mightier than the silver screen
So we will know that among those many
Temporal planes we have time and again
Confirmed do coexist there is one which
Stands out clearer than the rest
(published 1999)
(translated by Steve Bradbury)
*Poet’s Day is celebrated in Taiwan on the fifth day of the fifth month in the lunar calendar, the supposed day on which the great poet Qu Yuan (343?–278 B.C.) drowned himself.