Introduction: After the Epic Voice by Fiona Sze-Lorrain
Preface
Poetics of a Mirror Bai Hua
Mirror
Who Art Thou*
Autumn Drama*
Late Autumn Story
The Blissful Corduroy Dance*
The Prince of Chu Dreamed of Rain
Early Spring, February
Metaphor of Death
Memories of Mount Lu
Cloud Sky
Fly*
Love and Death of a German Spy in the England of a Sweet Nightingale*
[a lyric sequence]
1. [No butter. War chews on moldy crusts]
2. [Sweet nightingale. Keats' nightingale withdraws into dawn]
3. [I ask, Who are you.... That is, how did you]
4. [He sings, the singing drunkard walks past]
5. [Guard mounting on Wednesdays. Under the window the
drunkard walks past]
6. [Sweet nightingale. We close our eyes and wait]
Schermanski the German Soldier's Death Sentence
Chairs Sit into Winter...
Kafka to Felice* [a sequence of sonnets]
1. [My name is Kafka, if you recall]
2. [Snowy night of Prague, from scissoring alleys]
3. [Yet fatal is the breakthrough. Highest]
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4. [O night, you are always less than night]
5. [When can men see themselves]
6. [Reading is murder; I dislike]
7. [A sudden stroll: blood that spurs me on]
8. [Autumn soon, and soon I will]
9. [Men gaze at it for long, so what]
Umbrella
Midnight Bread
Elegy
Talisman*
The Lark This Year
Grandfather*
At Thirty*
Dialogue with Tsvetaeva [a sequence of sonnets]
1. [My black eyes smile at you with affection]
2. [Every day I dream of Eternal Laments. Clouds drifting]
3. [... as usual, I bury my head in the empty cup]
4. [Our eyelashes - why do they leap in foreign land]
5. [Sunlight is a wolf from time to time, sauntering]
6. [Cherries, a scarlet red, as if waiting for someone to return]
7. [Back in Moscow, you suffer a cold rebuff]
8. [Dawn in the east. A scene filled with static comes to an end]
9. [People can't explain everything around them]
10. [Taking off my glasses, I wish to translate for the deaf and the
mute]
11. [... yes, Your Honor, the moon surges]
12. [Will there really be a September goodbye]
Nightview, New York
Chef
Homeland*
A Key Dedicated to C. R.
Grandmother
In the Forest
West Lake Dream
Clouds* [a lyric sequence]
1. [When I, with a skull heaped with sky-blue mushrooms]
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2. [A leaf. This universe stretches its tongue into]
3. [Where are we? Beyond miles]
4. [You are turning two today; mermaids leap from out of nowhere]
5. [... mirages fade. Desktop, the ruins of elves]
6. [Over the horizon, nurses are bustling]
7. [You pick up a cub, when the tiger]
8. [You are turning two today ; when you awake]
Long, Long Ago
Letters in Four Seasons
Look, Brother, These Empty Bottles...
Verge
Song of Earth*
Off to Jiangnan*
World
Song of a Wall Driller and the Ultimate Ear*
Drunken Song
Adieu Schloss Solitude
Father
Sitting Listlessly*
A Wildly Noble Glass of Water*
High Window
On the Pacific Ocean, A Small Island Country
Lord Xiang*
The Invisible Opium War*
Lantern Town
Afterword by Bei Dao
Notes
Bibliography
