Y: A Parallel Poem
Changming Yuan

 

you are obsessed with the letter, with
your yellowish skin; you enjoy
       meditating within the shape of
a wishbone, inside the broken wing
             of an oriental bird strayed, or
in a larger sense, you look like
     the surfacing tail of a pacific whale
             who yells low, but whose voice reaches afar
far beyond a whole continent, to a remote village
     near the yellow river, where you used to sunbathe
             rice stems, reed leaves, cotton skeletons
with a fork made of a single horn-shaped twig
             when you were a barefooted country boy
                          on the other side of this new world

 

 

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