11/45/2002

The Long River Was Cut

I.

The long river was cut

by a huge Dam, on November 5th,

the two thousand second year after Christ,

although she runs since

countless years before human race.

A long string of history

of a mother river is drowning

in a huge plump pond.

II

The singing of boat songs will be cut.
The longing for lovers in downstream will be cut.
The coolies’ rope towing sampans upstream will be cut.
The existing of River Dolphins will be cut.
The pumping of the Chinese blood will be cut.
The inspiration of ancient poetry will be cut.

Gone are handsome towering cliffs,
graceful legendary flying springs,

deep woods where herb pickers,

woodsmen, and hermits once lived.

Gone are the canyon twisting rapids
where sharp-eyed oarsmen pole vaulting
among white-watered hidden rocks.

Gone are the love stories in rain clouds
where the Goddess of Wu Shan
ruling the Three Gorges.

Gone are millions of inhabitants,
their lands, family tombs and shrines,
temples, and endless Yangtze livelihood.

Gone are the water ghosts, mountain gods,
thousand years' of collective memory,
and my dead fathers' memory.

III

That told in his hours long dinners,
home-sick drunken talks
of his long gone years,
of his up-bring,
of his parents from upstream,
of his passions in downstream,
and of his war stories
that nobody could never conquer
China by attacking up against the river.

That same river he traveled,

left behind his youth and home,
he was never able to go back to in his lifetime

for the lost revolution war.

After I buried him in the Island

as an exile, I trusted he found a way

going back to his fathers along the waterway,

that many drifter ghosts return to their ancestors’ land.

The long river was cut.   How

I go back to my father’s now?

Would be my soul,

another homeless ghost.

- revisited, Thanksgiving 2005