13469760.0022.105Absinthe2377-3456Michigan Publishing, University of Michigan LibraryAnn Arbor, MI13469760.0022.105http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.13469760.0022.105Article叙事诗From Narrative Poem(poetry)Lian YangHoltonBrian010420172212017This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License. Please contact mpub-help@umich.edu to use this work in a way not covered by the license.

PHOTOGRAPH ALBUM 1

22nd February 1955 – 4th May 1955

Berne, Switzerland

Canto 1: Ghost Composer this unseen structure    written by a ghost   sets up a red auditorium   the little mouth in the womb sipping at scarlet sludge   maggot-like fingers    arching to grab at mother   grabbing red-hot sheet music   the cello spattered with pearl-white mucus   has been abruptly bowed    the fœtus hangs on that notation

 

listen    to the submerged structure at its inception

 

the foetus is the notation    a pearl of rancid perfume   its still undifferentiated limbs already nailed down   a moment ago squirming in the egg    it has shaken the bell’s ring apart   the music vomits branches saturated in sky-blue greasepaint

 

close your eyes and hear birdsong string up a dotted line   green leaves    tongues licking into the old age of bowstrings   twisting wrinkled flowers stockpiled by ghosts   like a dried scallop the cello echoes the ocean’s vast enormity   pouring out emptiness once, pouring out the sobs a thousand times in flashback   close your eyes    semen dissolves the dark   in the net’s tail, the silvery shoals   flesh still flowing in the little ears    flowing into thought   the little ghost calm in wordless song, the world calm in lingering   inside blood-red elements

 

this is May    the wind is full of weeping   an empty wooden chair before the classroom altar   turns around    waits for him to arrive

 

 First Day snow on the mountains    melting in sunlight   just slipped out of a tunnel too   this little beast    sleeps on its side

 

a weeping frenzy   fills in the hollows on the bolster   mycelium-fine hair damp and briny

 

paws shrunk in a coverlet of white mittens    tremble faintly   a tsunami picks up the sailor’s little    cot

 

another hostage mortgaged to home and family   snow on the mountains    parallel to the masthead watchers   he is added to endless weary human forms   returning    implies kissing the next ocean breakers

 

a photo stops the verdant pine wood outside the window   the instant daybreak hits the shutter   he falls in love with the dream in a dream that he isn’t there

 

shattered on a soft reef    to have reached   ignorance of black    ignorance of white   a bitter rosin    fierce friction on tree-trunks remembered

 

 Tenth Day in the market snow’s brightness slaps your face    too well-known   as the car’s automatic door lock snicks softly shut   his eyes are still firmly closed thirty years on

 

the keen chill whets life    the sheaves of light   golden    milky-tasting    far from symbolic   by a nurse’s hand at the bedside held tight

 

the seal’s little nostrils rise from the whitecap coverlet   geranium and lemon    a seductive solution thirty years on   though there’s doubt then    with sewn-up eyelids’ hurt

 

sewing the tenth-day world onto what’s external   light’s tenth pull on the trigger already an axiom   he’s shot    chasing the rifling of the barrel

 

whose nature lengthens unto death    avalanche sky-fallen   both feet pillowed on melt-water’s line of thought at the command of a geography milky-tasting and golden

 

double exposure in the mind    leaps the car door and lands on   suddenly-wakened acrid pellets of fruit-flesh   hidden by light-speed among blind cobbles he blazes on

 

 Mother’s Handwriting her hand gently strokes    after death still stroking   each white deep-sea coral branch   refracted through layer on layer of blue roiling

 

cold as carefully-chosen words    the first letter written to her son   in her own hand    the seawater scours with its murmuring   through images of a little face currents are glancing

 

with her scribbles    page by page growing   a drop of blood called love    from the start   each day into stickier grammar ripening

 

only against the tide of time can the son’s reply be delivered   the son’s gaze changes the direction of reading   reads up to    illness when he can’t hold a word for shivering

 

her cut-off hands    above the page her ocean hanging   a single inch away    the blue ink still more dazzling   body heat curdles into a place the wind can’t blow down

 

coral lamp    sets off a blood-woven twilight   faintly lighting the moment of a poem in childbirth   as all language responds to dying words clogged in a heart

 

 First Month Fulfilled into the round lip of the First Moon’s cup will pour   so many moons    now the child is lying quiet underwater   becoming part of the far-off view of early morning

 

waking early    little frog or swordfish   opening the webs between its five fingers    pupils gleam and wander to   the window    the aquarium’s bright beautiful glass

 

First Month clouds    belly’s fish-scales shimmering bright   the first Spring bends down and gives his cheeks a scratchy kiss   birdsong’s colourful tail dragging the little cot along

 

still doesn’t know the past exists    doesn’t know the bloody circulation   plucking at his eyelashes    an non-person’s daybreak each cell a boat wandering off its course

 

delivering the single passion of being dashed on the rocks   this child’s good behaviour    has exhausted the reticence of the future   uprooting    the clock’s second hand in brilliant sunshine

 

he has understood that the bitterest of tears must remain unspoken   little dolphin in swaddling clothes, one year old in one day   eyes full of amazement    gently splashing into the whirlpool

 

 Fifty Days the ocean is like mother’s body detained elsewhere   the only hand she has left    cut off in the photo   on her nightdress ripples of blue and green stripes

 

sleeves rolled all the way up    a mild and kindly light   embracing him    a seashore overflowing with the scent of soap   telling him that all his life he’ll rest his head on the sea-breeze’s shoulder

 

all his life sopping wet looking up from the washbasin   at the tiny nakedness clambering up the wrapped-up umbilical cord   a tiny stalk    with the evanescent dialect of the water’s voice

 

chatting with mother    her non-existence   has cut off    bleached    when injected into her son   brightly beautiful as the tracks of terns everywhere

 

even the sea will die too    just as words   have died    then scoop him up    skin sticky with dream journeys   an exercise lost in the washbasin

 

pulling at a hand embedded in a tiny armpit   that hand becomes ocean is also known    in a son’s body weight   lying down in mother’s fragments    he    endures this pleasure

 

 Seventy Days - May 4th the wild ducks have tucked lapis lazuli feathers in their bosoms   voyaging on the little lake of his snow-white lapel   bent into the eyebrows of an instant    spilling out laughter

 

migrant birds are seduced by the magnet planted in their brain   flight!    the meaning that lies between two dates   burns both hands    makes the writing’s shape more graceful

 

grown into a cobblestone full of life in the little square   jolting the pram    and the curious sun leaning over it   snowy mountains like smoke curling up from a cigarette

 

a farewell to being full of life    bamboo grove drawing out the scent of rain   blotting out a million miles    he reflects the claustrophobia of the water’s sound   first moment forged into ineluctable madness

 

the ducks’ emerald necks loll on their backs   seashore’s axis twisted through 360 degrees   sewn soft toys of his youth    only the needle’s eye is left

 

his today so like a fake    mollusk clouds   have endlessly climbed the ridgeportents of living   quack    quack    ducks’ orange tongues are still explaining

 

 Peking Opera Lesson peonies cluster round    on their fine stamens stand pergola and patio   her cheek transits over to him    a dream half-white half-red   his sweet tenderness becomes her springtime soprano   is’t man? is’t ghost?    an impossible beauty dallies with the world beyond   dalliance approaching    powder’s perfume shores up the aroma of flesh   hip-swinging    high buskins    wade the riffling pool till it overflows   he sings    and she signs each drawn-out end-rhyme   life is like theatre    but not everyone puts on a brilliant show —says Father

 

Eastern Peace Market    Fortuna Theatre    Goldfish Lane   all chasing the king’s concubine    clouds want clothes flowers want faces   history wants broken-down relics that follow after greasepaint is gone   he and she    amorous looks and sweet ogling fill in a blank storyline   white silk sleeves have been rippling for a millennium    who cares about dried-up names?   the shot glass is filled up all unseen    is knocked back all unseen   the snapped neck hangs from the strap in a darkened private party   pirouettes    a true cut flower encountered this false coming of age —says Father

 

a world hidden in air    materializes   with the crane’s cries    oh dynasties    the crimson and the white are bliss indeed   an aria forced from deep in the throat    forces out Deep Time’s metamorphoses   always the same story    always this girl and this boy   treading the margin of the stage as if it were the margin of time   treading the knife-edge of the now    oceans below the cliff recede   she and he watch us from a great height    only extreme elegance is allowed   oh how golden shines art’s alembic    it fills every silence in the ear —says Father