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Poems

Morning Melody and other poems

Morning Melody and other poems
by Changming Yuan

[morning melody]

You might have stayed up
All night, clicking at every link
To your daydream, searching
For a soulmate in the cyberspace

You might have enjoyed an early dose
Of original sin between sleep and wake
Before packing up all your seasonal greetings
With your luggage to catch the first plane

Or sitting up in meditation
With every sensory cell
Widely open to receive
Blue dews from nirvana

But you did not. Rather, you have just
Had another long fit of insomnia and
Now in this antlike moment, you are
Imagining a lucky morning glow

That is darting along the horizon

[crevice]

Between two high notes
The song gives a crack
Long enough
To allow me to enter
Like a fish jumping back
Into the night water

Both the fish and I leave no
Trace behind us, and the world
Remains undisturbed as we swim
Deeper and deeper in blue silence

Upon my return, I find the music
Still going on, while the fish has
Disappeared into the unknown

[pomegranate]

As long as you have ample blood
Filling in your cells, your heart
Will never fade
Within your fine structure

A rosy inner being:
Each sarcotesta is inflated
With juicy passion

[y]

yum yum yummy, you have
become so addicted
to this juicy alphabet
you can readily get high
high within your hairless skin
as yellowish as the bank
of the Huanghe River
less sleek than a china crane
but more fragrant than a young yucca
while its pronunciation can lead you
to the very truth you are pursuing, its shape
can grow from an unknown sprout
into a huge Yggdrasil, where your soul
can perch on an evergreen twig, cawing glaringly
towards the autumn setting sun

[yaleugooli]

While nobody has ever been to heaven (or hell)
I can readily go to Yaleugooli, an inner island
More charming than Maui and Palawan combined
With a beech more sensational than El Nido or
Lopes Mendes; in particular, a cave more majestic
Than Sơn Đoòng, where I cannot only get myself
Totally lost in seeing countless wonders of nature
But also take a respite as long as I like; an other
Eden where I can enjoy being one and the same with
Hyperion (from North California?) as my soulmate
Or live an immortal life like the Metasequoia King
Near my native village in central China, if ever I
I so choose when I feel disturbed by earthly winds
Or suffer from insomnia in the heart of winter night

Yes, I’ve been to Yaleugook, more than a thousand times
While they could only wish to enter heaven after they die

[equanimity]

Hold the sun firmly
Right above your inner landscape
And there will be no shadow
Shaking around
Let alone darkness
That may engulf your selfhood
Inside out

Unless it shakes itself with a wind
Like a young tree at the noon time

[jingzhou pepper]

Grown in my native place, the ancient Chu Kingdom, where Mao Zedong and Qu Yuan were born and raised, the Jingzhou Pepper is the most tasteful pepper in the whole world.

Neither
Too fat
Nor
Too skinny
But perfectly in a unique shape

Each

Is just hot enough
To make you
Either a revolutionary like Mao Zedong
Or a poet like Qu Yuan

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Changming Yuan

Yuan Changming grew up in an isolated village, started to learn the English alphabet in Shanghai at age 19, and published monographs on translation… More »

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