Poem

Ouyang Yu

Side by side

IN A WAKEFUL DREAM

i would like to talk to them on another planet
the night as vast as a graveyard
my bed like the leaf of a boat floating on the edge of the earth
i do not know whether they divide time into the ancient and the modern
perhaps a petal of my soul
will drift away like a meteor with spring water
shooting out a flying arc in the steely darkness
perhaps it will ignore waves of electricity in the universe
and my life as free as these electronics
with the other eyes
the other emotions the other languages
or is it someone else who is writing with this pen
or my brain has already been as empty as ether
and my eyes but two imagined stars
watching my own body
dying away with the world
but poetry is insistent
with its obscure words

on another planet
against the glimmering light
i see my leaf of a boat carrying my ashes
down the big river made from the dust of the universe
swallowed up by the vortex of the century

is it true that the so-called mirage
is but an unidentified smiling face?

Ouyang Yu

(China, )

Ouyang Yu graduated from La Trobe University with a doctoral degree in Australian literature. He has published more than twenty books in Chinese and English in the fields of fiction, poetry, literary translation and literary criticism. His first novel, The Eastern Slope Chronicle, was short-listed for the 2003 NSW Premier’s Awards. His third book of poetry, Foreign Matter, won the 2003 Fast Boo...