Dream Balloons

The view across the immensity of Tiananmen Square here is extraordinary...All of the history of China is symbolically focused here, at this very point, and it is hard, as you stand there, not to be transfixed by the power of it.
~Douglas Adams

Poets from a Hong Kong-based journal today, Cha: An Asian Literary Journal. These are from the "Tiananmen Thirty Years On" issue.

An excerpt of JUNE
by Xi Xi, translated from the Chinese by Jennifer Feeley

...Every June we dreamed
of far-off lands, of seeing a few
sights, buying a few books
visiting old friends. June
comes again, the colour of the sky
unearthly, where you are
there are sudden avalanches
the fluorescent screen starkly bares
a square ghostly pale, the capital
shrouded in thick frost, a cold front
advancing, everyone
in shock

What a grim June
So how are things with you? Not much to tell
except the temperature is falling, it’s so cold
so very cold, distant scenes
freeze
our dream balloons
pop one by one. We unfold
a map, unsure
if our feet still have the right to choose
where they’re heading

July 4, 1989

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IN THE SQUARE OF HEAVENLY PEACE
by Ming Di, translated from the Chinese by the author

after Ezra Pound

The aspirations of these young faces in the crowd—
plums crushed by a rust-bloody tower.

Author’s Note:
I see a gigantic tank, the Tiananmen Tower
with Mao’s picture, rolling along
the Tiananmen Square. Heavenly Peace,
that’s what the name is.
I hear people cry out, in peace, aspiring
for light from darkness.
An ocean of voices.
An ocean of gasping when the tank moves over.
An ocean of faces—
petals of plum blossoms—smashed
as the tank rolls down
the Avenue of Eternal Peace.

************

More:
To My Grandfather by Liu Xiaobo
6/4 by Anthony Tao

TeacherDance has the Poetry Friday round-up. Thanks, Linda!