I have a chapter in my new book, in The Phoenix Gone,
The Terrace Empty dedicated to the Chinese Democratic Movement.
And this is one poem in that series, "Beijing Spring."
Love, if I could give you the eternal summer
sun or China back her early ideological splendor, I would.
If I could hoist the dead horses back and retrieve the wisdom
charred by the pyres of Ch'in; if I could give mother the Hong
Kong of her [AUDIO OUT] sadness on the unyielding Earth;
if I had separated goose from gander, goose from gander,
the question of monogamy and breeding for life,
the question of the pure yellow seed would not enter.
This courtyard, this fortress, this alluvium
where the dead leave their faces,
each step I take erases the remnants of another.
Each song I sing obfuscates the song of Chang'an, ripples
washing sand, ripples washing sand, ripples.
Each poem I write conjures the dead washing women of Loyang.
Lover, on Tiananmen Square near the Avenue of Eternal Peace,
I believe in the passions of youth.
I believe in eternal spring as the white blossom's
sweet harbingers pull a wreath around the city.
As heaven spreads its blue indifference
over the bloodied quay, I want to hold you
against the soft silhouettes of my people.
Let me place my mouth over your mouth.
Let me breathe life into your life.
Let me summon the paired connubial geese
from the far reaches of the galaxy
to soar over the red spokes of the sun's slow chariot
and begin again.
[APPLAUSE]