Born in Jiayi in southern Taiwan, Sun Weimin (Sun Wei-min) received a B.A. in Western languages and literatures from National Zhengzhi University and an M.A. in English from Fu Jen Catholic University. He now lives in Jiayi and teaches at Jingyi University while pursuing a Ph.D. at National Chenggong University.
Sun started writing poetry at the age of fifteen and has won numerous literary awards in Taiwan. A self-described “slow” writer, he published his first book of poems in 1991, followed by a second book in 1997. He also writes essays and literary criticism.
A spider hangs from the ceiling, drops
and lands on my open book. “The jade tree’s limbs
are made of coral, the pearl curtain, of hawksbill.” It sneeringly is walking
as if filled with mute enmity, while I,
a large sick body, stand erect like a mountain.
There are gleams of spider thread before the evening window
like tiny cables tossing in the wind.
Behind me I hear others:
hundreds dropping straight down from the ceiling.
The tiny cables are swiftly rigged into a shining web,
blocking my retreat. Each spider
also seems to stand guard and sneer, as if
plotting against me, one large sick body,
plotting to hunt
and eat me.
(published 1990)
(translated by Mike O’Connor)
That year in the spring, I suddenly took sick,
an illness not particularly grave. Willow catkins
rose and fell in the wine of the air;
sparrows brushed lightly past damp, gleaming roof tiles.
I was still confined to the sick ward; every day
injections, drip IVs, and doctors
who discussed past and future bacteria.
In the end, I came to know my roommate well,
the history of his illness, and his family.
Blue-uniformed staff punctually brought the meals
and cursed, cleaning up the day’s garbage—
every day, until I left the hospital.
Every day, before I left the hospital,
I passed through the evening corridors,
arriving at fir trees and the little rose garden,
where other patients and their relatives and friends
together sat on wrought-iron chairs. Sparrows
flew in the small rain of the setting sun and perched
in their own shadows. In the end,
I became familiar with even more bacteria,
past and future, as well as
present strains, realizing
that I myself, perhaps, was really not so sorrowful—
I suddenly took sick in the spring of that year.
(published 1993)
(translated by Mike O’Connor)
A twist of fate, and he suddenly steps out of the evening southbound express, walks through a scattering of commuters on the station platform, and heads to the northbound local express. First he climbs the steps to the number 5 car, with its weak fluorescent lighting and breathing electric fans—a sound repeated in every car he passes through. Then, after hesitating, he finally chooses to sit in the number 7 car.
With his briefcase and bad dreams, he passes through a nearly deserted section of the car, at which moment he sees me huddling after work, exhausted, defeated; my hands like roots of late fall mangcao* on the illustrated Classic of Mountains and Seas.**
(published 1993)
(translated by Mike O’Connor)
He presses the handle of the water tank, then brushes his teeth and washes his face.
A middle-aged man in the mirror studies him.
The famous theme of the string music returns, as his wife
comes out of the kitchen and, with bowls and chopsticks, sets the natural wood table.
Flowers in a vase are quietly dying.
On pages two and three of the newspaper there are still unresolved political struggles,
the Middle East, sex scandals, and the puzzling case of scattered body parts.
8:37 A.M., she dutifully reminds him
to pick up his keys; he sits at the door tying his shoes.
As is customary, before leaving the house, he touches her left breast.
When he reaches the first intersection,
the light turns red. An old man in a sweatsuit looks around, passes through.
After the meeting I must find time to go to the bank, remember to be early for Friday morning’s appointment, and be careful dealing with that beautiful boss in sheep’s clothing,
he thinks. At this moment a white butterfly strikes his windshield.
He feels himself already perfectly awake.
But he is still dreaming.
(published 1994)
(translated by Mike O’Connor)
Delayed by certain business and missing his usual evening local express, he takes out a train schedule from his briefcase (so many tiny numbers and place names squeezed into a narrow, precise checkerboard pattern). Finally, he decides to go a different way—north to a bigger station where, after a wait of seven minutes, he can catch the Fuxing southbound.
He stands on the station platform in the thin, fast-fading light. Because his legs are stiff from the day and darkness is falling, he feels now no need to speak or smile. With two minutes still before the southbound’s arrival, he suddenly realizes that there is no one in the whole world who knows where he is, that some time ago he broke connection with his usual commute and has gone so far as to have no chance to make it home on time.
At his back, the first colors of night benevolently draw near, as if guarding an unbroken solitude, an unexpected freedom, glimmering like a star.
(published 1996)
(translated by Mike O’Connor)
The train comes from another side of the world, again. Passengers, who each day choose the same seats, put down their briefcases and open newspapers that offer freshly cooked breakfasts of wars, elections, horoscopes, and the floating corpses of stocks, drifted here from afar.
At a large station, nursing-school students board the train; most do not talk of bacteria. “He kissed me here,” she says. A man in the uniform of a dairy products processing plant opens his eyes and sees his nineteenth May streaming by the window.
In the end, why is the train running? A white-collar worker now and then senses he is moving without moving. But this commuter car must use electricity. For a short moment he has the temerity to be thinking this, before tuning again into the headset of his Walkman.
(published 1996)
(translated by Mike O’Connor)
Every day the colors of dusk and the temperature are different, but the train is nearly always on time. The commuters, as is customary, sit in their own darkness, chests rising and falling. Some take out portable cassette players to isolate themselves from the gentle, grasslike swaying of the other passengers’ heads.
It is said when life ends, it ends forever, but the retreating rumbling of the window view will inevitably return tomorrow. Besides, like morning, evening, autumn, and spring, it’s always difficult to tell one pop song from another on the cassette. Ah, love—it lets the stars and moon fly through the heavens, makes a colored party balloon of the sun.
At a small station, boisterous students board the train, momentarily disturbing the bourgeois passengers. It won’t be long before enmity, like a mutant strain of bacteria, breaks out again, harder to kill than before. At present, wild birds have already homed to their nests, but no need to worry—the train continues down the tracks.
(published 1996)
(translated by Mike O’Connor)
Late in the night not only that Yamaha is awake;
it skirts the rain puddle that the dusk left in the courtyard,
climbs up a dead banzai tree in the north,
discovering there is no exit. But doesn’t stop—
In short, before two o’clock it arrives at the seventh-floor balcony
(in moonlight the gas tank shines like a god),
penetrates the hole in the window screen, sees
a cabinet, a uniform, a small clock, a newspaper
and can smell the odor of dreams and animal fat. In the bedroom
it continues to stick to a fated dotted line,
going fast, nearly 300 meters per hour,
passing through the right knee, pubic hair, a red scar …
When a hand crushes an ant at the corner of a mouth,
the engine suddenly loses noise in the desolate street.
(1998)
(translated by Mike O’Connor)
*Mangcao, or Miscanthus sinensis, is a grass with long serrated leaves and tall plumes in fall.
**The Classic of Mountains and Seas (Shanhaijing) is an ancient geographical work, possibly of second–third centuries B.C., describing China and the neighboring lands. It contains much ancient myth and folklore, and originally was accompanied by illustrations.