Three poems of Shi Tao

From: For the Mothers of Tian’anmen Square
Here I will stand, as here I will be
the ambassador of a new spring
here I will guard in my intimate heart
the breath of all those children
and wherever you’ll look wild flowers
will bloom again in autumn’s white
and never my mother will stop to wait
in loneliness for him to come back
2 June 2004


June
My whole life
Will never get past "June"
June, when my heart died
When my poetry died
When my lover
Died in an abandoned pool of blood
June, the scorching sun burns open my skin
Revealing the true nature of my wound
June, the fish swims out of the blood-red sea
Toward another place to hibernate
June, the earth changes shape, the river falls silent
Piled up letters unable to be delivered to the dead
9 June, 2004


Pain
The portrait on the wall has lost its powers of reflection,
yet the wind at my window cannot stem this violence.
I torment you through one long night of passion
till we're both completely spent - two kites left in the rain.
Once, long ago, I was the star of a children's play.
Once, long ago, I used both my hands to teach children to sing.
Once, long ago, I heard two crows conversing, lit by the moon.
But the brute fact of cruelty
struck me down. Pain lacks the tenderness of moonlight.
Struggling, trapped in an iron box full of lies, I try to be a model patient,
to swallow a spoonful of spite down the throat of the motherland.
Taiyuan, 6 January 2004

These poems I did publish on this blog for the occasion of December, 10th (International Human Rights Day).