Liu Kexiang (Liu K’o-hsiang) is from Taizhong County in central Taiwan. He received a B.A. in journalism from Chinese Culture University and currently works as an editor for China Times.
Liu started writing poetry in the 1970s. His political poems in the early 1980s were widely read on college campuses. Since then he has devoted himself to nature writing, which seeks to understand our living environment through “the changes of the four seasons and the activities of waterfowl.” He has published three books of poetry and three collections of naturalist writings.
Someone is walking along the banks of the lower reaches of the river
At first it is only reeds that sway behind his back
He squats down to survey the opposite bank
Noticing the woods where a circling river bird has alighted
Later on he appears on a sandbar
An egret flying in the dusk looks down
When he disappears into the woods, the egret follows the banks
Of the river’s lower reaches—flying away beside the setting sun
(1978)
(translated by Andrea Lingenfelter)
1890 …
1915, posthumous son, Remember-China Chen,
Who liked to speak in Chinese, died in the fighting at Tapani*
1951, posthumous son, Establish-Taiwan Chen,
Who liked to speak in Taiwanese, took his own life on a small island
1980, posthumous son, Unity Chen,
Who liked to speak in English, succumbed to illness in a foreign land
2010, posthumous son …
(1983)
(translated by Andrea Lingenfelter)
All of the students from our village who went to the city to study teaching disappeared
That day, only Papa came back, panic-stricken
People say he was the only one to escape with his life. And if I remember it right
From that year on, he grew ever more doleful and joyless
Finally, he took a wife and fathered a son. Ignorant, I came into the world
When I grew up, my grandmother said I resembled him
In the late 1970s I started university
Perhaps it was determined by historical destiny
It was as if I’d encountered Marcuse before, and maybe I’d already known about
Socialism. That was an age of utter confusion
I got into underground publishing and distributed flyers
With my schoolmates. Many times I was warned by the authorities
I gave up the idea of studying abroad. Everything was telling us
We had no right to leave. Papa, who found it hard to comprehend
Repeatedly got into heated arguments with me
In the late 1980s, as if all had been reborn, or perhaps had come to an end
I married a woman
She …, I don’t know how to describe her
Now I work for a transnational company
Own an apartment, we have
A son, I have saved up one million
So I can send him abroad to study someday
(1983)
(translated by Andrea Lingenfelter and Michelle Yeh)
Someday there will be a spring
When our children and grandchildren may read
A front-page story like this:
The small water ducks are returning north from their winter migration
Cars passing by the Tamsui River
Are forbidden to honk their horns
(1984)
(translated by Andrea Lingenfelter)
Took a tour to a small island between the Equator and the Tropic of Cancer. Wet, humid green, ceaselessly fattening in the air. For five days running, we pass through the rain forest. There is no snow or prairie, nor hibernation, even in dreams. An ornithologist in our group is here to look for a horned osprey particular to this place, a species on the brink of extinction. Every evening as dusk descends, we call out in imitation of this bird, but all we hear is our own weak voices, sent out unanswered. The aboriginal guide says: without sound, the forest will disappear. And I am once again too upset to sleep; awake for the entire night, I press my cheek to the Earth, spreading out my arms into a curve and holding it tight.
(1986)
(translated by Andrea Lingenfelter)
Chirping of cicadas. Stilling of wind. A ceiling fan turned drowsily. The cap of a fountain pen between his teeth, he stared out the window at the afternoon, where I stood on tiptoe, my head showing, my hand waving, before I happily ran inside. He lifted me onto his lap, ruffled my hair, and smiled. Freshly wrapped in a page from a monthly calendar was a book, and he wrote inside the cover my name, ex libris, and the date, thirty-fifth year of the Showa Reign.* A bird roosted on the rooftop, a blue river boulder tung bird that had flown from Manchuria, with a body the color of vermilion-glazed porcelain. Autumn is here, he said to himself, and he took me by the hand to his office. We passed classroom after classroom and cut across the playing field, making for our home in the teachers’ housing. I wonder what delicious foods Mama has cooked up, he said to himself; then suddenly he picked me up again and lifted me high over his head to ride on his shoulders.
(1986)
(translated by Andrea Lingenfelter)
The street performer’s flute blows ever more shrill, and I bound up the stairs, frantically opening drawers. Is the monkey in the vest riding its unicycle? But the drawers are empty, there’s nothing there, so I crawl under the bed. The sound of the flute is growing weaker, fainter; the little dog wearing a red scarf must have made its entrance already, a cap in its mouth! I’ve ransacked every corner—only my little sister’s china piggy bank is left. All around it is very quiet; my heart alone is beating hard, sound of the flute! The piggy bank smashed, I gather up four or five coins and run downstairs. The entrance to the temple is deserted. They’re gone! I rush through the streets, searching. Every alley is flooded with flute music, and monkeys and little dogs appear in every window. I hurry back home, climb up the water tank on the rooftop, and gaze out into the distance beyond the village. They have already climbed the steep slope and are walking across the span of the long bridge, about to enter another village. Hey, I shout at them hoarsely, waving with all of my might. The fifty-fifth year of the Republic, Raven day, winter.
(1986)
(translated by Andrea Lingenfelter)
In the next century, I will be like my father, with a terminal disease, a bent back (slightly hunched even in youth), raised blue veins coursing across bony arms, and facial muscles stretched tight over protruding cheekbones—those two cheeks, having borne the brunt of so many sorrows, grown hollow, leaving only the eyes, mournful in expression, yet still large and bright. One day, he abruptly left his home in the countryside and came north to see how his child was, and he sat as long as it took to have mid-day tea before he caught a train back south.
He was someone who rebelled against his times, his hands always thrust into his pants pockets, his eyes always watching the sky.
Delta in the ocean, island in the continent.
Please give me back the little station where only one train stops each day, the cobblestone road where a mother quail and her chicks cross softly in the early morning. My home is beside a not-too-distant graveyard, on the square in front of the temple, where ears of rice are spread out to dry in the sun. I splash in the shallows of the stream, humming a tune, and hear clomping on the bridge above: my father the grade-school teacher, holding a fishing pole, forever ambling by.
(1987)
(translated by Andrea Lingenfelter)
While the fires of war burned, not yet out of high school, shouldering a gun taller than yourself, you went to the Malay Peninsula; throughout the journey, the sounds of death were your companions. Starting under a toxic equatorial sun, you threaded your way through sweltering rain forests; after you returned home, the pain of your wounds carried through to another, different campaign. By then you no longer had any way to restore yourself to yourself.
But there was one time when we cupped in our hands a shrike that had been nursed back to health, and went out to a grassy field to set it free; it shut its eyes and lay peacefully in the palm of your hand, not wanting to leave, and the seventeen-year-old you said: Go on, this isn’t your home.
1951, Shuili, the railway terminus, Eiketsu-san, otome no koigokoro o shirimasu yo? Mr. Hero, don’t you know the heart of a young girl in love? I have stood here and become a field of Showa grass left after the cane cutting; little red-orange flowers bloom year round, they are my eyes that droop after gazing toward the horizon. My twenty-fifth year also floats across the brook, the rice paddies, the schoolhouse, until my feet come to rest at the foot of the wall of your house, grown over with shriveled and waxen berries.
(1987)
(translated by Andrea Lingenfelter)
THE CENTRAL RANGE OF LITTLE BEAR PINOCHA
In the night, firelight deepens wrinkles
And eye sockets grow more sunken, hiding away
The glint of pupils denser than sorrow
You squat down on your sagging backpack
There’s nothing left but roasted corn on the camp stove
The staple grain of this night and of a lifetime
Tomorrow morning, you’ll thread your way through the forest full of pine needles like a water deer
Hearing the solemn soughing of hanging vines
Kano Tadao,* white-haired and middle-aged, traveled this way
He’d given up his soul to Taiwan when he was a child
Turning his back on the 1930s, he made seven solitary visits to Snow Mountain
You too want to strike out toward a ridge of no return
Leaving no descendents, planting nothing but your solitary, squat shadow
Letting your skull tumble down a slope of shattered stones
This is the region where camphor, juniper, and hemlock have disappeared in turn
Four hundred years without peace
All that remains is the quiet of a chilly plain
Teardrops fall from the tip of your nose
Right into a blazing, fiery dream
The life of a naturalist
Is lonely, so lonely
Let star crows cry to waken death
Let stone tigers chew your flesh
Let winter nights bury your spirit
(1988)
(translated by Andrea Lingenfelter)
*Tapani is a place near Tainan in southwestern Taiwan where many were killed during a 1915 uprising against Japanese colonial authorities.
*The thirty-fifth year of the Showa Reign corresponds to the year 1960.
*Showa was the name given to the reign of the Japanese Emperor Hirohito. The era began in 1926 and ended in 1989 with the Emperor’s death.
*Kano Tadao was a well-known Japanese ethnographer whose published work included books on the aboriginal tribes of Taiwan.