A Heart-Shaped Mold (By Yan Li) Poem by Denis Mair

by Yan Li
(translated by D Mair)

A rank smell spreads from the middle of a sheet of paper
This is what happens to surplus goods that don't get eaten
A build-up of stock that weighs down the shelves of history
Making unsold regrets turn into stink bombs

This is the stink of manuscripts living too long in the hands
Although the rankness is written in orderly lines
Rancid butter cannot be described in glorious colors
And this perhaps is poetry
It concentrates too much nutrition and becomes
The fat that our era has gone on a diet against
But the facts are not so simple
We must wait for humanity to redesign its own brain, using outgrowths of spirit
Before outwardness will yield to an inner measure
By which time the divinations of thought will have gone stale like groceries

Is this the rankness of oversupply, or lagging demand?
It no longer matters
The important thing is, I'm still hard-working
As long as life needs me to take up its pen
My pen will carry me onward to prove
That the heart's shape is the mold of a poem
And every day a layer cake written from this mold
Will keep using its overstocked mustiness
To mourn the dwindling spiritual appetite of our kind.