The first publication of the poetry of Liu Xia, wife of the imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize recipient Liu Xiaobo
I didn't have a chance
to say a word before you became
a character in the news,
everyone looking up to you
as I was worn down
at the edge of the crowd
just smoking
and watching the sky.
A new myth, maybe, was forming
there, but the sun was so bright
I couldn't see it.
—from "June 2nd, 1989 (for Xiaobo)"
Empty Chairs presents the poetry of Liu Xia for the first time freely in English translation. Selected from thirty years of her work, and including some of her haunting photography, this book creates a portrait of a life lived under duress, a voice in danger of being silenced, and a spirit that is shaken but so far indomitable. Liu Xia's poems are potent, acute moments of inquiry that peel back to expose the fraught complexity of an interior world. They are felt and insightful, colored through with political constraints even as they seep beyond those constraints and toward love.
The first publication of the poetry of Liu Xia, wife of the imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize recipient Liu Xiaobo
I didn't have a chance
to say a word before you became
a character in the news,
everyone looking up to you
as I was worn down
at the edge of the crowd
just smoking
and watching the sky.
A new myth, maybe, was forming
there, but the sun was so bright
I couldn't see it.
—from "June 2nd, 1989 (for Xiaobo)"
Empty Chairs presents the poetry of Liu Xia for the first time freely in English translation. Selected from thirty years of her work, and including some of her haunting photography, this book creates a portrait of a life lived under duress, a voice in danger of being silenced, and a spirit that is shaken but so far indomitable. Liu Xia's poems are potent, acute moments of inquiry that peel back to expose the fraught complexity of an interior world. They are felt and insightful, colored through with political constraints even as they seep beyond those constraints and toward love.
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Overview
The first publication of the poetry of Liu Xia, wife of the imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize recipient Liu Xiaobo
I didn't have a chance
to say a word before you became
a character in the news,
everyone looking up to you
as I was worn down
at the edge of the crowd
just smoking
and watching the sky.
A new myth, maybe, was forming
there, but the sun was so bright
I couldn't see it.
—from "June 2nd, 1989 (for Xiaobo)"
Empty Chairs presents the poetry of Liu Xia for the first time freely in English translation. Selected from thirty years of her work, and including some of her haunting photography, this book creates a portrait of a life lived under duress, a voice in danger of being silenced, and a spirit that is shaken but so far indomitable. Liu Xia's poems are potent, acute moments of inquiry that peel back to expose the fraught complexity of an interior world. They are felt and insightful, colored through with political constraints even as they seep beyond those constraints and toward love.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781555979140 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Graywolf Press |
| Publication date: | 11/03/2015 |
| Sold by: | Macmillan |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 224 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Empty Chairs
Selected Poem
By Liu Xia
Graywolf Press
Copyright © 2015 Liu XiaAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-55597-914-0
CHAPTER 1
One Bird Then Another
Back then,
we were always talking
about the bird. Not knowing
where it came from — the bird,
the bird — it brought us
warmth and laughter.
One winter night — yes
it was a winter night — the bird
came to us while we were soundly
sleeping. Neither of us saw it.
In the morning we saw — sun on glass —
its small shadow
imprinted, staying
for a long time, refusing
to leave.
Then, we started to hate winter,
the long slumber.
We put a red lamp
outside overnight
so its light would tell our bird
we were waiting.
Vines full of grapes grew
in the yard. We kept the windows
open, remembering: the bird.
But we didn't talk
about it any more.
One Sunday, the sky was
overcast, but it wasn't raining.
We went out together and you bought
me a blouse from a boutique.
When it got dark, we went
to a crowded restaurant
and each ate two bowls of dumplings.
On the way back we
were quiet, not saying a word,
feeling slightly uneasy.
Arriving home, we saw
the lamp flickering in the yard
and a handful of green grapes on the porch.
We stopped walking
and looked up, then together
lowered our heads —
the bird had come and gone.
We murmured
but didn't speak, worried
it would never return.
The door opened at last
and a mysterious red radiance streamed out.
There was a piece of paper with written lines,
but you couldn't write a word.
I wanted to try on my new clothes
but I couldn't undress.
The bird, again, the bird.
5/1983
Black Sail
The ruddy man goes fishing and catches your
favorite fish,
a black fish, a fish who knows you.
Your heart splits in pain, you clench your teeth in
loss.
You stroke the sea, and where your hand
touches, fish jump up —
so many fish. So many fish seduce the man to
hoist the sail
and set out to sea for the night, forgetting
it's dark and one may lose the way.
You reach out your arms and pull the man
close, quiet, until his hair floats like seaweed.
Then you calm down and light a cigarette —
green smoke
rises. The next day, when firecrackers
clear the way for a full black sail,
you become a gust of wind, a cloud, an eye.
The woman who lost the man loses her breast
milk overnight.
You often appear in the dreams of that thirsty
child,
telling him his father is happy in the sea. And he
is happy.
The child grows into a man who keeps silent all
day long.
He remembers everything but says nothing.
The woman's tide ebbs. The green seaweed fades
drifting away with each wave.
12/1985
Days
Our life, like the calendar
on the wall,
presents a stale picture.
Friends come at night
and I cook enough dishes to cover the table —
remembering to put salt in each.
You get chatty
without even drinking wine.
Everyone is happy and eats chicken feet
until the bones are sucked white.
At dawn, our friends are suddenly gone
like a breeze.
The sunflowers on the window curtain
are crazily bright
against the light.
Cigarette ashes and beautiful fish bones
are jammed down our throats.
Without looking at each other
we climb into bed.
12/1986
Transformed Creature
You have a strange pet —
one eye is a cat's, the other a sheep's.
Yet, it won't socialize with felines,
will attack any flock of sheep.
On moonlit nights,
it wanders on roofs.
When you're alone,
it will lie in your lap,
preoccupied,
slowly studying you until —
on its face — a challenge.
6/1988
Scheme
— for WB
You're always disappointed in me.
I too, can do nothing about myself.
Poems with my name
on them pile up,
but you don't know it's a scam.
A lonely soul, a guest,
comes now and then and moves my pen.
He likes my writing
and the way I smoke.
When I'm alone with him,
my words are tidy and beautiful.
When he's distracted,
I try to get him drunk
so he'll stay,
but he won't be fooled.
I want to give up my name as a poet.
It makes others expect things from me
and makes me face the blank page
with despair, and even madness.
I want to tell the world the truth,
but when I try, he appears
and seizes me.
Before I can revel
and before you can love me again
he is gone, instantly.
His world is too far —
farther than I can reach
in this life.
I can only live in this room,
be your mediocre wife,
shop, cook, and do laundry,
or light a cigarette
and stare out the window for a long time.
My life —
I'm at his mercy.
7/1988
June 2nd, 1989
— for Xiaobo
This isn't good weather
I said to myself
standing under the lush sun.
Standing behind you
I patted your head
and your hair pricked my palm
making it strange to me.
I didn't have a chance
to say a word before you became a character
in the news, everyone looking up to you
as I was worn down
at the edge of the crowd
just smoking
and watching the sky.
A new myth, maybe, was forming there,
but the sun's sharp light
blinded me from seeing it.
6/1989
Game
— for myself
Sitting here cross-legged,
lucid as a God,
I light a cigarette.
I see another me playing a dangerous
game in the human world.
You're enjoying yourself,
wearing a costume, acting
whimsical. I try to remind you
every way I can
not to be careless.
I startle you while you're sleeping,
snuff out the lights as you're walking upstairs.
If you don't have an umbrella,
I pour heavy rain.
But you don't mind in the least,
like a child carried away with herself.
You play your games wholeheartedly.
I envy your not being
a clear-headed God.
Give me a glass of wine.
Let me play the game with you
regardless of ending with a full house applauding
or one person alone crying
to the night.
12/1992
Word
In the morning, a word
from someone else's dream
peeks at me
like a conspiracy.
The minute I open my eyes
the word, with an elegant gesture,
takes me.
The lonely word
like an incurable disease
causes pain, screaming,
and possibly death.
But I'm envious —
it flies up when it
takes me.
6/28/1995
I Sit Here
I sit here
watching the sky go
from light to dark,
listening to the last of the sun
groan, waiting for the first drop to
knock on the open window.
One word waiting for another —
they will never meet.
A drop of rain
makes the sky and earth one piece.
In stilled time,
the soul of rain
quietly comes down.
6/1995
Poison
Van Gogh's ear sends me an urgent message
that the earth is about to collapse.
Beware of the white-washed night sky
the flowers in full bloom on the dining room
table
the orderly lines of sentences in a book
the weather forecast on TV
and Kafka's crazy eyes.
Guard the last ray of fire
like farmers guarding the only sorghum
left in a field after a natural disaster.
I am the poison of this world.
I can see a rotting corpse, the earth,
covered in snow
and I can see wriggling maggots.
Do not try to fool me with purity.
Do not hide death.
Do not build an artificial paradise.
The warm look from the eyes of a fake angel
is worse than the glory of straw yellowing
or a cigarette burning out.
1/1997
Grandfather
In the dusty ancestral hall,
a lingering shadow
doesn't want to leave.
Is that blurred face you, grandfather?
For years, through my myopic
eyes, I've tried to seek your hands, to touch
the years I had never passed through.
In dreams, only, I arrive at your house.
I know you exist.
Your yellowed youth in old photos
looks alien in this
southern green.
When I'm alone, I often see you
holding my hand. Together
we walk through book
after book,
which fills me with chilling grief.
Nobody shares the details
of your life, as if you lived
before the ice age. It's impossible
for me to become an archaeologist.
I can only put my whole self
into giving you back
to these thin, frail words.
In your old house, do you feel
a flash
of fresh air,
grandfather?
2/1997
A Landscape
One person's landscape
is monotonous and desolate
in the eyes of passersby,
like a forgotten word in the ocean of a
dictionary,
an incomplete image in a broken lens.
With my eyes closed, I learn how to paint
by myself and in solidarity with you in my soul,
brighter with every stroke.
A blind person's landscape,
as it's of one heart and mind,
is unfettered, unrestrained.
Even when imprisoned
you can reach
the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem.
4/1997
Shadow
— for Xiaobo
One morning as I was sleeping,
a shadow hovered over me like a dream.
This shadow still blocks my vision.
Time goes by, seasons change,
but that long, cruel morning
hasn't ended.
A chair and a pipe
wait for you in vain.
No one sees you walking down the street.
In your eyes, a bird is flying,
green fruit hangs from a tree without leaves —
since that morning, the fruit refuses
to ripen in the fall.
A woman with burning eyes
starts writing day and night
with endless dream-words while the bird
in the mirror falls into a deep sleep.
4/1997
One Night
A needle fell into the night.
Organs split.
During that soft, clear night,
unexpected pain
caused facial spasms.
A woman sat by the lamp
outside of her sleep desperately
waving her hands in the air.
Emptiness slipped between
her slender fingers.
All the words about darkness fled,
as her hands projected shadows on the wall
then deformed like cut paper.
Only the sleepless cat inside her
cried out in her blood, its eyes beaming
like snow.
The woman fighting nothing,
in the end, was engulfed with her words by
the nothing between her fingers.
A comet called Hale-Bopp
flew mystery across
the night sky.
4/9/1997
Awakened
When I woke up,
I was surrounded by the dark.
The bird in my palm screamed again,
then came the sound of footsteps on the stairs.
The building was about to fall down.
I sat alone in bed,
hands gripped into fists
on my cold knees.
Screams gasped for breath, struggled in
my tight fists.
I had come to that moment
in a dream when a crisis
is closing in.
Within the screaming, I could hear
the bird's breath.
But you were on the opposite side
of time, standing in the sunlight
watching a feather
drift down the wind.
4/18/1997
Dark Night
Those eyes will return tonight
with their ghosts
in the shape of tombstones.
One moment stays in my mind
even though my mind is filled with straw.
The empty tomb
doesn't have a drooping sunflower,
or any of van Gogh's mad good-byes.
Bones are grieving:
an icy riverbed deep in the earth.
All the ghosts with all those eyes
are gathering here by the candle
speaking to me in a silent dialogue.
The white white lilies
start to fall, unnoticed.
I can't compare life with death,
truth with fabrications,
my palms with the back of my hands.
Tonight, the night that never ends,
a tree grows out of tear, and from the tree
many desperate hands are hanging.
In your dark night
my words fail to form.
We can't return
to that moment.
Only wind wanders down
the Long Street of Eternal Peace.
A woman passes through the dark night,
white lilies refuse to stop her.
She carries a notebook filled with poems,
the one thing she's brought,
and follows the footsteps of ghosts.
Into the night leaf after leaf
of white paper flies beyond sight.
6/3–4/1997
Kafka
Kafka —
I don't know how long it's been
since you walked alone
under the Prague sky.
All of a sudden, your brothers
appear — throngs of them.
Where I was born,
we would collectively follow orders
and now there are people raising
their arms in your name,
marching to the castle.
Kafka —
you've become a new kind of god.
They've desecrated the castle
with a false premise
and pretend to be martyrs.
Kafka —
I see you searching for the road to the castle
but also hesitating.
Let us return to the Elderly Bachelor
Blumfeld's house then.
Have you forgotten that this story
has no ending?
Let us turn around
to see where the two balls
bounce endlessly
of their own accord.
6/1997
A Mother
Only by hating me
can she show her aging love for her son.
She wants to take that stubborn son
back into her dry womb.
Her mouth goes on and on spouting arguments
that can't change his flighty mind.
She keeps raising a belt out of habit
but only beats the void.
Filled with anger,
she toys with the dough in her hands
and, at any moment, might
smack me.
10/1997
Twilight
I like this moment.
Dusk is falling.
Everything around me
dances in uncertain light.
The midday sun
and midnight tears —
silent, neither have been
so colorful
as they wander around me.
The streetlights are unlit.
The setting sun is baby-soft.
This long hour of waiting — deep
in one's bones — feels casual.
I sit in the slowness of this swift moment,
calmly smoking the last cigarette
before dark.
Growing shadows press heavily
overhead. Words break apart
in the midst of chaos.
Beyond and above all of this
a bird is flying
high.
4/1998
Nobody Sees Me
Nobody sees me
helpless.
I'm not being cursed. I'm just easily
attracted to unattainable things —
things that reject me,
that are outside what's real.
My life steals from me.
I believe in a life that is an absurd
fantasy and is also hyperreal,
a life that hides behind death masks
and looming shadows.
I cry out to my own thoughts
that are spinning
on the floor.
I see a shadow walking on death's path —
slowly, rhythmically,
calmly. Nobody
speaks a word.
I wave — nobody
sees me.
5/1998
Chaos
Marguerite Duras
has chosen me.
She's pulled me off the ladder of time,
ending my days of moving through on my own.
I'm no longer satisfied merely watching
the surface of my daily life.
I want to be tapped on the head and feel pain.
Real chaos occupies me —
I'm surrounded by unreal images.
Strange shadows are everywhere
and everywhere there are traps.
I'm no longer the owner of this room.
I've been looted.
Duras orders me around
in her drunken madness.
If something is to be destroyed
please don't leave traces behind.
There should be a hand
to give a simple
but firm signal
for anything that's not yet clear.
5/1998
Misplaced
Fragile and unprepared, I've been tossed
into a play with no dress rehearsal.
Betrayed by the shimmering lights,
I see myself standing on the stage
in an absurd posture; I see
the fool's sharp teeth gleaming.
The character, assumed
sad and weak,
loses control: her hungry veins
burst into surging waves.
So I become a red-eyed evil witch,
and, under watchful eyes,
brew wine inside skulls.
No costume or makeup
can disguise me.
When the show is over,
I stay on stage with myself:
one of me is tearful
the other laughing loudly.
7/1998
Empty Chairs
Empty empty empty
so many empty chairs
everywhere. They look
charming in van Gogh's paintings.
I sit quietly on them
and try to rock
but they don't move —
they are frozen
by what's breathing inside.
Van Gogh waves his paintbrush —
leave leave leave
there's no funeral tonight.
He looks straight through me,
and I sit down
in the flames of his sunflowers
like a piece of clay to be fired.
8/1998
To Lin Zhao
Like this, I look into your eyes,
and keep looking while
I gently take the cotton out of your mouth.
Your lips are still soft,
your tomb is empty,
your blood burns my outstretched hands.
Death, cold and cruel, makes me sit alone
in the September sun,
incapable of feeling sad.
Any kind of tomb
will seem frivolous
to freedom-loving you.
Mid-autumn, every year,
lanterns float on the river,
but they can't call your soul back.
Your eyes cold, you sit
on the nether-boat that sails under Kafka's pen
looking out at the absurd world.
The toasts for the centennial of Peking
University
make you laugh and sneer.
Drink drink drink,
this is blood —
you say in the darkness.
9/1998
Silent Strength
Living with dolls, the power
of silence is omnipresent.
The world opens in four directions,
and we communicate with gestures.
In the shadows, in silence, an imaginary
red apple exudes a fragrance.
Do not open your mouth or the illusion
will disappear in the blink of an eye.
Darkness constantly falls around me
regardless of the time.
A doll turns her back to me
to stare out the window for a while.
The dazzling white of the snow
stings her eyes,
but she refuses to close them.
Love is so simple yet so difficult.
I'm moved by her
and my silence deepens.
I must guard these
small fragile things
as if guarding our life.
11/1998
Speechless
Over and over I hunt for shoes
inside my memory, shoes
to put on the dolls
but the ones I find are too big and heavy.
The owners of the shoes look back at me
from photographs, silent.
I become a piece of burning wood.
Give me all the water on earth,
and I will still refuse to float.
Is there a force somewhere in the sky
that can turn the clock back?
I stare blankly, wait
for the final moment.
There were Jewish children
who wrote poems before dying.
In silent recitation,
I carve lines on my bones.
Inside empty shoes
my bones
are piercing flesh and skin,
those bare feet
ice-cold.
1/1999
High Noon
An aging woman is pushing
a baby stroller
through a park of sun and dust.
Some dolls sit upright in the stroller.
Children free themselves from their parents'
hands
and run closer from across the park.
The woman walks gently
and the dolls are silent,
but strangely the children can hear
high noon crying.
They stumble and follow the stroller,
looking back and forth from the dolls
to the woman who's pushing them.
The parents are watching the parade
from a distance;
they call their children's names
but their voices are lost
between the sun and dust.
The woman walks
calmly, her pace is steady.
No one knows
who she is
or where she's heading.
2/1999
It's Only Waking Up
I live in the bodies of the dolls
who kill themselves over and over in dreams.
When I wake up
I find myself not reborn
but only waking up.
Sometimes in front of other people
I wear an I-don't-care
expression,
the kind of arrogant face
that makes me feel like
I've had an epiphany.
No one knows
that I sit alone with a single light at night
feeling guilty
and grateful
at the same time.
Wind has been blowing the curtains,
but who can prove
it's just the wind?
9/12/1999
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Empty Chairs by Liu Xia. Copyright © 2015 Liu Xia. Excerpted by permission of Graywolf Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
Foreword: A Mix of Silk and Iron by Herta Müller,Introduction: The Story of a Bird by Liao Yiwu,
One Bird Then Another,
Black Sail,
Days,
Transformed Creature,
Scheme,
June 2nd, 1989,
Game,
Word,
I Sit Here,
Poison,
Grandfather,
A Landscape,
Shadow,
One Night,
Awakened,
Dark Night,
Kafka,
A Mother,
Twilight,
Nobody Sees Me,
Chaos,
Misplaced,
Empty Chairs,
To Lin Zhao,
Silent Strength,
Speechless,
High Noon,
It's Only Waking Up,
A Grapefruit,
A Soul Made of Paper,
Entrapped,
Murder under the Moon,
Moonlit Skeletons,
The End,
Rant,
Untitled,
Fragment No. 8,
Nothing to Say,
Snow,
I Copy the Scriptures,
How It Stands,
Translators' Afterword,