THE POEM BOOK

LIU XIA, ALFREDO CABILDO SOLOMON, & EDGAR ALLAN POE
**************************************************************************************

one, two, and three

LIU XIA 
A Grapefruit

I'm holding a big round
golden grapefruit
that smells bitter.
A small knife
can cut through what seems
to be a thick skin—
I begin to shiver
in quiet pain.

A life without pain
is an unpicked
fruit: it rots.

I want to be a grapefruit cut
by a knife or bitten by teeth.
I’d rather have pain
and die in pain peacefully
than watch my body rot
with maggots squirming inside.

This whole winter
I’ve been doing one thing repeatedly—
peeling grapefruits one after another
absorbing the nutrients of my own death.

9.13.1999

Translated from the Chinese by Ming Di and by Jennifer Stern

___________ 

TPB's notes: Liu Xia (1961- ) is a Chinese poet and photographer born and grew up in Beijing, and worked as a civil servant for the Beijing tax bureau. She started writing poetry in 1982 and at a literary gathering met fellow poet and activist, Liu Xiaobo, whom she married while he was imprisoned in 1996. Liu Xiaobo is currently serving an eleven-year sentence in a prison in the northeast China, while Liu Xia has been under house arrest since her husband was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010.

_____________________

ALFREDO CABILDO SOLOMON
Quicksilver

When you return to that street
where we met,
take out the silver mirror
you carry with you.

And between the shadows
that cross your face,
choose one
and catch it in your oval.

Make it disappear
(like I lost myself)
in the labyrinth
of your hands.

Translated from the Italian by Don Cellini  

_________ 

TPB's notes: found on the ofipress page

_____________________

EDGAR ALLAN POE
A Dream Within A Dream

Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow-
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand-
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep- while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?

___________ 

TPB's notes: eap