Yang Lian
Writing | 1996 | China
The Composer’s Tower
1
the wooden bridge’s
direction is the rotten
direction of dead fish
rain dyed black by a silver lake
stone rotted to let roots clutch
loathing’s root that ivy stabs in flesh
spit out the sound of rain summer like a mouldy pelt
birdsong plunging into the starving trap of the ear
hearing turned into a breach in the dawn
everything interred in the tower sounds out in music
a madman’s sodden head floats to the surface
makes the sky fall apart again and again frenziedly stirs last night
but last night will never again pass by you
A circle of dark windows open only to one person’s pain
2
the battle is only between sound and silence
you hear the corpse opening the lid and struggling up through the soil
the final day has arrived in the end at a pallid letter
time retarded just enough to forget
declaiming in the novel accents of a blood-red bird
the dead are wakened and lose to death again
you lose to a life on a page of the score
like a wrecker lectured by the clenched teeth of the dumb
write every man-faced grass shares the winter’s flow
flesh invisibly returns
flesh has elapsed in composition gone further still now
as negating light moves from note to note
3
the door bangs shut and the inquisitor’s rage changes
a father softly explains himself not at all like a father
there’s an ear aged eleven in the tower
glued to the wall by all of its years
overhearing all the time how sound dies in sound
like silence creates a stone of heaped silence
a child stands on top of the high tower
swallows the wickedness stuffed into his little hand by dark stars
the storm stuffs a silent stomach full
this June morning pulling you back into the madman’s last night
writing out the final whistle
a tower of ageing skin so easily blown away
Translated from the Chinese by Brian Holton
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