A Dog Poem For Tomorrow (Yan Li) Poem by Denis Mair

by Yan Li
(tr. by Denis Mair)

Tomorrow
A dog that only goes wild after death
Clamps the world in its jaws and won‘t let go
Poems of tomorrow have no answer either
Clamping their own sins in their jaws

Tomorrow
Those dogs who lived long enough in the city
Taking along apartment buildings softened by furniture
Will charge into the pregnancy of an orchard
And clamp jaws on an unborn infant‘s original face

Tomorrow
Dog teeth will have become piano keys
Only bone-crunching music will rate popularity in this world
Tomorrow
Suffering will still be re-published sheet music
So machines in printing plants will be best at singing

Ah, tomorrow
The home-guarding talents of tomorrow's dogs will be snipped out at hospitals
A homeless world with dogs vacationing everywhere
Puffs of clouds like dogs will often float by in the sky
Some airplane-flying artists
Will paint young-women-clouds in the sky
Tomorrow‘s dogs tracking June mornings and December afternoons
Will still expose their bored tongues
But swallow even dirtier things to cut down reproduction
Tomorrow‘s dogs make a science of freakishly prolonged life

Tomorrow‘s doghouses can be hung any old place like a shirt
But tomorrow‘s dog skins will be shed by dogs
Tomorrow a dog of an orbital satellite
Having shaken off its tail wagged to cinders
Will go off into space to be human

Ah, tomorrow
I too will have such a tomorrow
So take advantage of today
Before the sky, as wide as the solar system, is chained by a pack of dogs

Holding my shadow in my mouth
From where sunlight shines
From out of lamplight
And even from enchanting moonlight
I have come out
I have come out forever.