Two Poems
Yongming Zhai
I'm a wild imagination with the charm of an abyss
By chance you gave birth to me. It was Dirt and Sky
When two becomes one, you call me woman
and reinforce my definitiveness with a female body
I am soft as if water has a white feather
When your hands hold me up, the whole world is in me
In a human body, under the sun
I am so dazzling that even you're amazed.
I am the most caring, the most sensible woman
I learned it all but still share everything with you
I am dying for winter, for a humongous dark night
My heart has a border, I want to hold your hand
but my posture to you is always a grand failure
When you are leaving, my grief is about
to vomit my heart out of my mouth
What prohibits me from killing you with my love?
The sun rises for the whole world, but I only for you
I have my own way to fill you up feet to head
with my most hateful tender and sweet feelings
If help calls, will soul grow a hand?
If the ocean is my blood, will it raise me up
to the feet of the setting sun? Then who will remember me?
For all I will remember is not just an ordinary life
Dark Room
Crows under heaven are all the same dark, now
I am scared, they have so many relatives
their large number and mass power are irresistible
Still we four sisters are the necessities
the traps in a dark room
Graceful as jade-sculptures walking back and forth
as if the winning tickets are at our hands
Purposefully we are up to mischief, mean-hearted
but still appear in a good-daughter's manner
and repeat our daily failures
In our boudoir, we're fair maidens of a prestigious family
We still smile with classy resentment, rack our brains
to enrich our public postures and appearances
to make our youth gorgeous like raging fires
We build some very dark and purposeful tricks
(Those who cross the border, carefully plan their way
well-sharpen their teeth, with straightforward eyes
but flat faces will be my brothers-in-law?)
At night, I feel
our room is full of crises
Cat and mice are all awake
We go to bed, in dream looking for
unknown street numbers. At night
we're women falling off stems like ripe melons
tossing and turning phoenixes, and so on
We're four sisters, renewing ourselves each day
Marriage is still the thesis in choosing a lover
Bedroom light disappoints newly-weds
Bet all you have, I told myself
Make the house the starting point