Hillside Poem by Xiao Kaiyu

Wildflowers in full bloom float on the black
sandpaper of this night, white ones, yellow ones,
swaying to the sweep of the incoming murk.

They sway in a radiant and lucent landscape
with birds gathered in dreary evening council.
Ah, the playing of an Er-hu pierces the ink painting.

Just the sort of requiem to rouse her, so she'd
rise from the oppression of wildflowers, rise,
and reclaim the space occupied by amnesia.

Rhetoric has replaced a living room crammed with mouths.
Hunger skills have replaced a kitchen stacked with cookbooks.
Lessons in ethics have replaced a bedroom strewn with underwear.

With a renewed and generous solemnity, she
appears to loom near the leafy and shifting
hedge. Did her face betray a tormented smile?

The moisture underneath is the earth sweating,
the wildflower roots wriggle deep into earth's bones, maggots
crawling up to devour the last bit of fortitude I relied upon.

On the surface, the dead persist in sacrificing themselves.
In fact, it is the living who die yet again.
A glorious transformation of the system.

Please return to the frigid sweat of the hillside,
amid the slackened self-control of the unconscious,
where instead you can make judgments and not just muddle on.