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Streaking with the Spirits of the Dead of June 4th, a poem by exiled Chinese writer Liao Yiwu

12/31/2013

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Streaking with the Spirits of the Dead of June 4th 
by Liao Yiwu (translated by Michael M. Day)


   The square in Stockholm
   Last year snow, this year rain
   Night falls early, and there’s a chill wind off the Arctic Ocean
   Abruptly we begin to streak, as if possessed by the spirits of June Fourth
   four throats howl as if hit by bullets
   I’m coming, Liu Xia – the simple artist, Meng Huang
   stripping off, shooting off
   Beiling, Yiliang and old Liao also shoot off
   like four arrows
   As if the naked newborns
   repeatedly intoned by that great forefather, Laozi

    A newborn is like water
    thirsting to return to the mother’s womb
    A newborn is like grass

    eager to cover the land like a spring day
    Under the earth lie other breathtaking ancestors
    Zhuangzi, Qu Yuan, Li Bai, Liu Ling, Ruan Ji [1]
    and Su Dongpo, an exile on Hainan Island
    All streaked on the river bank of long ago, in the morality of the day
    their noble flesh like dazzling flashes of lightning
    piercing the history toyed with by the powers that be
    then passing away like a song, or a sob

    This age also lies beneath the earth
    the spirits of millions beaten, starved, campaigned [2] to death
    to this day not finding rest
    If the three thousand dead of June Fourth still lived
    they’d be about our age

    They were shot by the Liberation Army
    bullet holes undulating like waves
    slowly rusting in our breasts
    Lord above, o Lord above. Their cries
    still roll off our tongues today
    They shed their shells, as one would strip off bloody clothes
    Their spirits whitened
    whirling up in succession like snowflakes

    Together with the spirits of the dead
    we streak in a swirl
    The spirits run faster than us
    They even outpace
    Stockholm’s rain and snow
    When last year and this
    the Swedish police caught us, pushed us down to the ground
    leaving traces of being dragged before the Prize Award Concert Hall
    the fleeing spirits instead charged the entrance, circling above
    the heads of the judges of the Swedish Academy
    Protest, protest, we protest

    In the name of the massacre’s survivors the spirits protest
    a flunkey of Mao Zedong
    a defender of censorship
    a freak who’s not heard of political prisoners in China’s jails
    Mo Yan taking the prize. Protest, we protest
    the quivering spirits raise their unseen middle fingers

    On his third release from prison Liu Xiaobo
    wrote to Liao Yiwu bidding “dance with the spirits of the dead”
    But the Nobel Peace Prize has yet to reach Tian’anmen

    The amnesia of humanity
    a black hole in the universe
    Suffering China
    books eaten by worms
    surging toward a road on the horizon amid the sighs of Confucius
    But [for] a flash of streaking
    like lightning, like meteors
    we are locked up in a Swedish jail
    like lightning and meteors locked into a black hole

    For imprisoned memory
    For nine-year-old Lǚ Peng, seventeen-year-old Jiang Jielian, nineteen-year-old Wang Nan
    twenty-two-year-old Xia Zhilei, who all died on the morning of June Fourth
    For Liu Xia and Liu Hui, who suffer nervous breakdowns because of Liu Xiaobo
    For Li Bifeng, Gao Zhisheng, Liu Xianbin, Xu Wanping, Guo Feixiong, Xu Zhiyong
    Tan Zuoren, Chen Xi, Chen Wei, Wang Gongquan, and Yassin from Xinjiang
    innumerable political prisoners
    all also a part in imprisoned memory

    It’s all too old
    like Norway and Sweden
    judging ethics and literature
    And it’s all too new
    like imprisoned memory and running nude

    Disclosure, transparency, and the truth
    Protest, jogging memory, and streaking

    Is there nothing else to be done?
    Nothing else!

    The spirits of the dead know no borders
    They sprout each year with the spring
    And we too sprout and streak together with them
    in Stockholm. With hope in years to come
    in Beijing, Pyongyang, Lhasa, Moscow
    we’ll protest without a stitch on
    not needing to self-immolate like Tibetans
    and not having to run so fast

    We protest with a smile
    Those too lofty, too old authorities justify themselves with a smile
    warily discussing whether to admit fault
    And through the mouths of the living the souls of the dead of the past and today
    speak of “peace”. Yes
    only by apologizing to one another can there be “peace”.

    December 21, 2013, in Berlin
     
    [1] Liu Ling and Ruan Ji are members the “Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove”, scholars, writers and musicians renowned for their dissolute ways in the 3rd century CE;

    [2] As in the numerous political campaigns that roiled China after 1949.
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