Words! before you led me to destruction
   the guava seed was a clean hand
   prodding me to get on my way
   I've torn the skins of things, like crushing grapes
   My heart spread its wings

   hovered in the round heart of the wine
   Men's faces, then, stood in oil
   Had I ever used the word detest?
   
   
   My mouth is a horse's mouth
   —language my hay, dried in sun and air
   The feet of birds are buried under the hay
   lizards on one side building a nest
   Talking about them causes me an
   animal pain
   takes my hand, places it on the word
   to find the spot from which feelers sprout
   
   
   Childhood! My poems a clean house
   the fields a ball rolling
   Mother's two baskets on a pole across her shoulder
   Over emerald leaves, rivers rush on
   Had I ever worn the anxious look I wear now?
   Make my poems a rag to wipe with—wash here, wash there
   Make grating sounds—wrench here, wrench there
   Throw the books on the floor
   From a snowy sky remote from humanity
   snowflakes striking become soundless tears
   Had I ever tried to praise beauty?
   My entire body glittering quicksilver
   my first song was in my youth
   My teeth shone then like the horns of a fawn
   in the pride of life, my smile unhidden
   I walked then
   like water drawn from a well
   
   
   Remembering! this conch shell
   Golden yellow makes me see
   the flesh that quivers within life
   Sound of stones contracting
   The sound of flesh
   Waves washing over strands of sinew
   The drowned become shells
   and in my breathing speak their understanding
   of a world that follows after death
   Vengeance on the living, through silent sounds
   Remember! trees felled and dry and rotten
   Ants on a stump
   crawling in a ring
   Light encircles you
   People--in moving forward, they fall
   into the deepest dark. The most
   radical among them try hardest to look out
   drawing nearer, day by day, unfeeling flesh
   Seeking that conch
   we are still children
   laughing at the sky
   
   
   Words! before you lead me to destruction
   I want to see clearly your real shape
   Living among people, I am
   a wolf, not yet grown into exile
   avoiding the traps of words, of phrases
   All around me, throats steeped in venom
   swaying in the barrens! The four seasons
   hide within men's eyes
   revealing the spots of the leopard
   My heart, how can you not press your lips
   to patches of sunlight in the mud?
   How can you not wail for an animal?
   An infant rises before me
   flexes four limbs, cries
   Earth glitters, not yet fouled by men
   Then how can I not sing?
   One after another my poems
   make the sound of chains shaken
   one of my legs crushed by the crowd
   my cry of indignation and despair
   
   
   Crack the world to its core, you'll find a poem
   Standing in the presence of poetry
   is all that can make my whole body tremble
   Hearing insects make love
   my blood gushes from poetry's heart
   words tumbling over each other
   clambering over light-beams in the wheat
   Empty conch shell. Anxiety and respect
   together forge a brain. Still in a woman's womb
   love, gleaming gold from head to foot, rising
   on this fluid, a hand takes hold of the ocean's horn
   From the moment a melody called to me
   life showed me the delicate bones of men
   filled with a marrow of purest gold and
   praised by poetry
   Our ancestors appreciated in silence
   the sharp shards of those bones
   the trembling of these healthy beasts
   at life's very center
   Fields of flowers opened by light
   
   
   My heart! Could you then pronounce
   from your precious lips the filthy
   word detest?
   
   
   
   
   
   
   XUE DI
   trans by Iona Crook and Keith Waldrop