From Mantis 2
Feixing by Yu Jian
by Yu Jian
|
From
Flight
Simon Patton
history withdraws itself from my life
crossing a silken noon towards
a coffee evening
past time in the East is a corpse already I am
someone who has
withdrawn from the dead centre of death
how uncanny: I live not in advancement in ascent or
in growth
but against the course of the sun pulling back into
night in the
direction of a pint-sized time
while people I know have only recently passed away in
a towering
future Dong Xiuying of the Va nationality
woman of the Masang tribe author of an epic poem dead
at dawn
from cancer of the liver in Kunming’s No. 43
Hospital
now I am qualified to speak of death because my
airport dying has not
yet begun its descent
in front of me on this plane I don’t know a
single body brought to a
halt by a ruptured oesophagus |