Xu Huizhi (Hsü Hui-chih) is the pen name of Xu Youji, who was born in Taoyuan in northern Taiwan and received a B.S. in chemical engineering from Taipei Institute of Technology. He has worked as editor for the China Evening Express and as chief editor of the literary supplement of Liberty Times. He is now Deputy Chief Editor of Unitas, a leading literary journal.
Xu started writing poetry in the 1980s, cofounded the poetry journal Horizon in 1984, and has published six books of poems in addition to prose. His work encompasses a broad range of themes and styles. From reflections on romantic love and existential angst in his early work, to political satire and realist nativism in the middle period, to metaphysical contemplation on the clash between body and soul and the hope of redemption through Buddhism in his recent writings, Xu powerfully articulates the central issues of our time. As he puts it, “Poetry is exquisite resistance.” The object of resistance is not simply social injustice or political ideology; more important, it is attachment to the phenomenal world, which, according to Buddhism, is the cause of all suffering.
—FOR AUNG SAN SUU KYI*
All through the night the familiar male body
Floats before my eyes
Only he can touch me
Touch the scars on my back
He has held me in his arms
I have borne and raised
His children
When I am sick he crouches
By the bed and kisses
My frail forehead
Frail Burma
Still mired
In my dream he stretches out both hands toward me
Trembling, then falling
I see British fleets sailing up
The upper Irrawaddy River in the dark
Eighteen-eighty-six, British India
Conquered the land of the Buddha
The colonizers brought farming technology
They thought that having fed our bodies
They would have fed our souls
Strikes and demonstrations
Brought us a new nation
But new curses followed on its heels
The overbearing military regime
Arrested the president, closed down universities
And opened fire at the crowds …
—Were the Aung San family destined to die for this land?
Like my father, I had no choice but
To fight with this body in the name of love
My aging mother wrote me a letter
Saying she was sicker than Burma
This time I must push away the heavy fog of England
Abandon my husband and children, and return to my country
To taste the poisonous flowers and bitter fruit
Buddha of mercy
Gave me a pair of bare hands
To defy the army
Those who had fought alongside my father
Degenerated into heartless beasts
Ne Win issued the order
To annul the outcome of the elections
Those who betrayed the revolution
Surely betrayed the Buddha
In the crowd I heard them
Cry: Aung San! Aung San!
With a bashful smile
How I wanted to apologize
For my tardy return—
The young guards
Light up cigarettes
Outside my house
To fill their stomachs
Even if they cooked the stars in the sky
The Buddha would forgive them
Like forgiving an errant child
Now I shall choose hunger
In the endless cycle of transmigration
Only the Buddha can
Reap an abundant harvest of five grains
To fast, to go without food
To give oneself to the hungry tiger
The Buddha said, life does not end
With the first lamp or the second lamp
Where the sun doesn’t shine
One vows never to lose compassion
And to be one of the hungry people
Before the silent Buddha
A perfectly contented soul
As if he is touching my
Shriveling body
(1991)
(translated by Michelle Yeh)
A FLEA ATTENDS THE BUDDHA’S SERMON
My Buddha, when you sit in your majestic pose
Like an ebbing sea, an immovable mountain
All I hear is cicadas’ screech that fills my ears
Like a rolling tide it drowns out my call to you
I call you, my Buddha
I have followed you, attended your sermons for forty years
I’ve known for a long time that you have no Dharma to teach
And I have no Dharma to learn
You are the ferryboat carrying me across the river
Before the river is crossed, how can one burn the boat?
For forty years I’ve smelled your scent
Observed your form, watched Dharma grow like an abandoned infant
Yet you, my Buddha, you have become thinner and thinner
I can hear your bones collapsing in an instant
I too have my joy, but not the joy of Dharma
I am a flea, allowed to live in the folds of your robe
On your bosom
They still listen to your sermons
They either weep and grieve out of shame
Or rejoice at release from the corporeal form
I alone, I alone know
That you have nothing left to say
For the first time in forty years I will
Sadly but fearlessly
Bite you, and suck your blood
I will have the joy of Dharma, being the only one in this world
To have tasted your precious blood
I will have the sorrow of Dharma, having drunk
The last teardrop of the world
(1993)
(translated by Michelle Yeh)
—ANANDA’S* CONFESSION
My Buddha is like a wind, blowing out the flames of my love
My Buddha is like fire, illuminating the plague of my heart
My Buddha is like a mountain, setting free the wild hare of my body
My Buddha is like a forest, sheltering the birds of my greed
My Buddha knew that I would sleep with the Girl of Matanga** in my previous life
My Buddha consoled me, saying clarity grows out of filth and mud
My Buddha promised me that I would be the first to be freed in the next life
My Buddha touched me, caressed the top of my head
My Buddha is merciful, with supreme compassion
My Buddha, do not shed a tear for me
(1993)
(translated by Michelle Yeh)
While my head is still beautiful
Cut it off, carry it with your hand
Drum on it hard
I can’t bear decomposing and gnawing maggots
My body in ruins is a sacred Dharma vessel
Now forgotten by the world.
(1993)
(translated by Michelle Yeh)
—THE END OF AUNG SAN SUU KYI’S HOUSE ARREST
This time when I leave the prison
The sun shines perfectly over the peninsula of Indochina
A rice bowl facing toward the ocean
I can feel my people and me
Like solid grains of rice
Rinsed and cleansed by seawater
In the sun’s flames we use gun stocks for fuel
To cook slowly a bowl of rice
From the ten directions we’ve come
To the ten directions we shall give
Doves and tigers are welcome
Dragons and lambs are not to be turned away
A hungry baby bites down on the mother’s nipple
I walk out of the prison
The guards who have watched me for years
Lower their heads in shame
When the land has turned into a grave for flowers and trees
And the sky into a cage for flying birds
There is nothing I can do
Except be a robust grain of rice
Refusing to go rancid and rot
What’s more, I insist on smelling pure
Sprouting with difficulty, shooting up, and bearing fruit
Yes, in times of adversity
Life must still resemble rice-cooking
Requiring full concentration
Now I shall welcome the water
The Buddha extends his hands
To cleanse me, to cleanse us
I shall float in the water, to purify myself
Before the final, quiet fall
Awaiting fire
Awaiting fire
I feel my postmenopausal body
Grieving and rejoicing in cool autumn
I fetch water for rinsing
And cooking a bowl of rice
For the man-devouring hungry wolves
And the Buddhas of three worlds.
(1994)
(translated by Michelle Yeh)
Soon it will be cold
And the desire to make love
Maybe it will be empty like death when it’s over
Yet it is and will be the only evidence
Soon it will be cold
And the fear of getting dressed
You will put on the clothes and leave
Soon it will be cold
Will-o’-the-wisps flicker in the ruins of the flesh
(1995)
(translated by Michelle Yeh)
On the snow-covered prairie
Where a purple hare leaps
In the blink of an eye
Clovers grow everywhere
This winter
We scissor the cloth of the Milky Way
Garner the brightest star of Sirius
For a burial button
A hundred years from now
Ah purple hare purple hare
There goes a clever hare
Without a shred on
(1996)
(translated by Michelle Yeh)
Implore your fingernails
Implore your hair
Implore your menstrual blood
Implore your nipples
Implore yellow rain from the heavens
Implore you to turn around when you leave
Implore the soul, if we have one
(1996)
(translated by Michelle Yeh)
*Aung San Suu Kyi, born on July 19, 1945, is the daughter of General Aung San, who led the Burmese against the British colonizers in the mid-1940s and was assassinated in 1947 before Burma achieved independence. At the age of fifteen, she accompanied her mother, Daw Khin Kyi, the Burmese ambassador to India and Nepal, to Delhi. After studying at Delhi University, she went to England and earned a B.A. in philosophy, political science, and economics from St. Hugh’s College, Oxford University. She married Dr. Michael Aris at Oxford and had two sons. In 1988 she returned to Burma to lead the opposition party, the Nationalist League for Democracy, after the socialist leader Ne Win brutally suppressed prodemocratic uprisings. The NLD won over 80 percent of the votes in the national election in 1990, but the election results were annulled by the authorities. Aung San Suu Kyi was put under house arrest in July 1989. For her heroic, peaceful resistance in the face of oppression, she won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991. After years of international intervention, she was released in July 1995, but there are still restrictions on her freedom. She continues to call for peaceful democratic reforms and free elections in Burma.
*Ananda was the Buddha’s favorite cousin. Popular among lay followers, especially women, Ananda reached sudden enlightenment after the Buddha passed away.
**Matanga is the name of a place, possibly a secluded forest fit for meditation.