INJURED PORTRAIT
   [Van Gogh: "Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear and Pipe," 1889]
   
   When music deserts the human heart, when
   squirrels leap into pine cones, when antelopes

   frisk on the ocean floor
   when leaf shrinks back to branch, refusing point black
   to fall
   we will all be empty vessels, our
   vague eyes anthills strung along
   beams of light, insect eggsacs
   cemented to the heart, mouths
   reduced to maledictions against barnyard animals
   Everything, everything enrages me: this
   nation of wild beasts, falling into decline
   And as for poetry: a
   stick between the jaws to block my bite
   
   My ear: a sky-blue gem
   touched by the crying of bugs
   —summer lives inside. Place for a badger
   to warm his paws night long. O deep
   blue flames. Blue gem. My grandmother's
   hands gripping the cow's udders
   my irritable father: behold
   a village, stately, its lonely glow
   lighting my forlorn heart
   
   Swarm of locusts! Your chomp
   encompasses earth. The people
   are deaf and dump, their ears no better than
   saucers tied together by a string through the skull
   Crocodile! Crocodile! my loved one, blue
   blue gem, my aching
   aching heart. Lop it off! Light
   Light barricades my head. The sun
   suddenly drops, warming the creatures
   prancing in my blood
   O gem, kingfisher-blue, to whom
   shall I give you? who will
   take you? Only the unstopped ear
   Whose heart will hear the sacred harmonies
   
   XUE DI
   trans by Iona Crook and Keith Waldrop