Ten Years Poem by Yang Lian

Time like a fish swims to its own taste Cliff not under your feet years Emptier than a word sea wall Sharp nipples suckle the storm Rocks are not there turned like a brass bolt you rust In the armpit of shining waves epitaph of a sunken ship Name swathed in fish scales Charges down a slope of flesh the art of stinging a jellyfish This void called water turns sweet Is called old sunlight possesses the pull of a magnet Ten summers in your lungs Trim back the black water level of a haemorrhaging garden Reflections in the harbour dance upside down Striving to remember who had left you with a nature such as yours In the kitchen sculling a glass of sour self-brewed beer Is the same as pouring it out skeleton completes yet another zero