WEBVTT

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I have a chapter in my new
book, in The Phoenix Gone,

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The Terrace Empty dedicated to
the Chinese Democratic Movement.

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And this is one poem in that
series, "Beijing Spring."

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Love, if I could give
you the eternal summer

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sun or China back her early
ideological splendor, I would.

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If I could hoist the dead horses
back and retrieve the wisdom

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charred by the pyres of Ch'in;
if I could give mother the Hong

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Kong of her [AUDIO OUT] sadness
on the unyielding Earth;

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if I had separated goose from
gander, goose from gander,

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the question of monogamy
and breeding for life,

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the question of the pure
yellow seed would not enter.

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This courtyard, this
fortress, this alluvium

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where the dead
leave their faces,

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each step I take erases
the remnants of another.

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Each song I sing obfuscates
the song of Chang'an, ripples

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washing sand, ripples
washing sand, ripples.

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Each poem I write conjures the
dead washing women of Loyang.

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Lover, on Tiananmen Square near
the Avenue of Eternal Peace,

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I believe in the
passions of youth.

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I believe in eternal spring
as the white blossom's

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sweet harbingers pull a
wreath around the city.

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As heaven spreads
its blue indifference

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over the bloodied quay,
I want to hold you

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against the soft
silhouettes of my people.

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Let me place my mouth
over your mouth.

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Let me breathe life
into your life.

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Let me summon the
paired connubial geese

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from the far reaches
of the galaxy

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to soar over the red spokes
of the sun's slow chariot

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and begin again.

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[APPLAUSE]

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