Map
Midnight, there are people beyond the window enticing you
Cigarette butts, like silkworms start clambering
On the table, a glass of water also starts to churn
You pull open a drawer, inside are forty years of snow
A voice, someone's voice, asks: Is it true the sky's a map?
You recognize the pitch-black lips of the one who cries out
You recognize him
In fact it's you, it's that old you
You recognize your head
Just as it's coughed out into the distance from a hospital window
On the far horizon, blacksmith and saboteur move together
Those fighting fires squeeze onto a postage stamp
As they madly splash out the ocean
Swimmers in the water are splashing one another
Their swimming trunks are flour sacks
Printed with the words: Saboteurs far from the motherland
A whiff of a pungent odor
You sniff out the earliest news of the storm
Like a cloud, following the butcher's hooks you float out the
butcher's back window
Behind you, there's a leg still sitting on the butcher's block
You recognize it as your very own leg
Since you passed over that step
1990
___________________________
Duo Duo
The Boy Who Catches Wasps
translated by Gregory B. Lee
Zephyr Press, 2002
