Anthem (Liang Xiaoming) Poem by Denis Mair

by Liang Xiaoming
(translated by Denis Mair)


- -to my first love, who tormented me, warmed me, crazed me, and sent me into reveries

Why don't I sing of my Hangzhou love?
The straight-stab-to-the-appendix of her pineapple smile
Her slender fingers, sugar-coated lips
Bedsheet freshness of her sobs, against my wayfarer's shoulder
That whole field of moisture that flowed from her mouth
I was Egyptian in my woodenness, face black like the bottom of a pan
Stared down by cold wind of endless streets
Pressed by crowded stones of an abyss
Yet dreams around a water lily rivaled hairs in number
Shone on gray walls from starry reaches above
My curving childhood lane, my door of forlorn adolescence
The deep-sunk moat made winding turns like her verdant breath
The doubled-back streamer of her chin
In arabesques of my pen this moment, sowing seeds on white paper
Dancing to drumbeats of her tapered white feet
Her plain bike on my pillow is the chrysanthemum that spins my thoughts

Chrysanthemum with lips pressed together, honeybee with pressed lips
Her eyes make wide gyres under my sky
She is the trailing flight of a long skirt
Over the translucent folds of my ears

In Hangzhou, where Broken Bridge
Was practically an anthem