1
I want to go to Korea
I want to go to the Square
to the floral-printed North Korea

a holiday with the Koreans:
flowers in torrential waves
old people and children arranged into squares
young smiles frozen into walls
women with gazes like torches
leader standing before his portrait
all walk at the same pace

2
I want to go to Korea
I want to go back forty years
to an afternoon of my father
in the midst of crowds in torrents of red flags
I want to stand next to him
to keep him company, so he won’t feel lonely
at that time, the sun so intense
people suffocated

I want to go to Korea
can’t go to the Soviet Union
can’t return to the time before I was born

3
I want to ask Kim Jong-il
his views on blockbusters
and art films
tell him I shed tears for The Flower Girl
tears shed can never be regained
what about bloodshed
what about launched nuclear bombs
I heard he enjoys surfing the net
does he keep a blog
why not a celebrity blog on Sina.com

4
I want to go to Korea with a copy of Vogue
during a famine, Korean radio says
less food prolongs life
weeds foster health

manly stubborn Koreawomanly skeptical Korea
eternal politics are never rightbehind the times
isolated, ending up with nothing
but don’t enrage those who have nothing

don’t enrage
common folks miles away from home
going to hand in their application

5
pardon me for wanting to go to Korea
wanting to see their faces
like their elders’ expressions
like a time machine

who can bring Korea back to the future
back to the utopian twenty-first century
back to hackers, back to business
back to Walmarts and supergirls
back to rather-die-than-no-entertainment
back to modern poetry that doesn’t exist

6
in a Russian movie
I saw Red Square in a Moscow winter night
quiet and empty, dim yellow streetlights
snowflakes fell slowly
on shoulders of soldiers on guard

soldiers, soldiers in the world
all born with the same
face, a young boy’s
as if after a long time
he’d blink lightly
vapor floats far, far away

 

A Flower

a flower
not my tour de force
I’m best describing you a spring
I can even let you feel its regrets

but a flower
I don’t know what to do with a flower

—translated from the Chinese by Fiona Sze-Lorrain