Yang Wanli

Yang Wanli (Yang Wan-li) had two awakenings. The first came at 35, when he realized the poetry he’d been writing had only been imitating other poets. He burned all his poems and started again. The second came at 50, when he realized he had still been imitating others and began writing from his own immediate experience. Yang wrote more poems in the year after his second epiphany than he had in the fifteen since the first, his subjects now flies on windowsills and flowers along city walls.

Sour plums at lunch leave my teeth feeling all feathery.
Banana trees cast green across gauze window-screens.

A long day. I wake from a noon nap empty of thought,
all idleness, watch kids catch falling willow blossoms.

A bit sober from overnight wine, a bit dead drunk:
I feel altogether giddy, or sick, and almost no joy.

On the pond’s dark depths, gossamer rain. Alone,
leaning over a railing, I watch circles ripple open.

Chance sign on windowsill: the fly sits warming its back,
rubbing its front legs together, savoring morning sunlight.

Sun nudges shadow closer. But fly knows what’s coming,
and suddenly it’s gone: buzz heading for another window.

Lonely and depressed, words absent, I lean against the door
alone: plum blossoms and light rain, dusk verging on yellow.

Rain drips off the eaves, sad excuse for a sage lofty and free.
Just one drop after another: won’t it ever try anything new?

Don’t read books,
don’t chant poems:

read books and your eyes wither until words are bones,
chant poems and every word’s vomited from the heart.

People say it’s delightful to read books,
they say it’s wondrous to chant poems,

but it means lips hissing on and on like an autumn insect,
makes you thin and frail, and ravages you with old-age.

Thin and frail, ravaged with age: maybe you don’t mind,
but all that racket is pretty annoying for anyone nearby.

That can’t compare to sitting still in a studio, eyes closed:
lower blinds and sweep away dust, light fragrant incense,

then listen to wind, listen to rain. They have such flavors.
When you’re strong, walk. And when you’re tired, sleep.