{"id":14929,"date":"2023-09-12T19:29:50","date_gmt":"2023-09-12T17:29:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/?p=14929"},"modified":"2023-09-17T19:31:14","modified_gmt":"2023-09-17T17:31:14","slug":"poems-by-ouyang-yu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/?p=14929","title":{"rendered":"poems by Ouyang Yu"},"content":{"rendered":"

Induction, a Short One<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

People often say<\/p>\n

In this country<\/p>\n

There is no need for fiction making<\/p>\n

Life is fiction<\/p>\n

Reality is surreality<\/p>\n

Worse, or, better<\/p>\n

Life is but death<\/p>\n

Relived<\/p>\n

\u2026<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Ash Tea<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

A glass of tea<\/p>\n

A flip-open computer<\/p>\n

And a plastic bowl<\/p>\n

Of water<\/p>\n

Form the life of this author<\/p>\n

Whose name happens to be Zhen<\/p>\n

And who keys<\/p>\n

To the accompaniment of birds<\/p>\n

Singing in a spring of unlove<\/p>\n

Every now and then<\/p>\n

He knocks the ash, the ashes<\/p>\n

Of his chain ciggies<\/p>\n

Till he accidentally<\/p>\n

In the keying of a particular word or phrase<\/p>\n

That he now has difficulty remembering<\/p>\n

\u2014Say the difference between<\/p>\n

The singing of a bird in Royal Shanghai<\/p>\n

And that, the cackling, of a bird<\/p>\n

In Kingsbury\u2014knocks the ashes<\/p>\n

Into his tea<\/p>\n

In the instant in which<\/p>\n

He trashes his tea in the sink<\/p>\n

A detail emerged, from a past<\/p>\n

Wallowing in Wollongong<\/p>\n

Where he had his first taste of salty coffee<\/p>\n

When he realized, belatedly<\/p>\n

That the common room of the common place<\/p>\n

Had bags of sugar and salt<\/p>\n

And he, the unwitting one, picked the wrong<\/p>\n

One and that makes all<\/p>\n

The difference<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Hot Dry Noodles<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Hot dry noodles<\/p>\n

A Wuhan variety<\/p>\n

Are noodles you make hot<\/p>\n

By soaking them in hot waters<\/p>\n

And de-watering them in a sieve<\/p>\n

Like container<\/p>\n

Before pouring them steaming in a bowl<\/p>\n

Topped with sesame jam<\/p>\n

Soy sauce, vinegar and chili sauce<\/p>\n

In today\u2019s news<\/p>\n

A woman passenger in a subway<\/p>\n

That shows such stations as Xunlimen<\/p>\n

Turns it into a face-covering bomb<\/p>\n

By doing exactly that<\/p>\n

Onto another woman photographing her on her mobile<\/p>\n

With the intention of putting it on her Weibo<\/p>\n

For all the world to see<\/p>\n

How uncivilized someone is<\/p>\n

When eating hot dry noodles in a crowded compartment<\/p>\n

The upshot? There is no upshot<\/p>\n

The throwing woman gone, on heels oiled<\/p>\n

And the photographing woman telling the story to the media<\/p>\n

Her face red and hot, from the oncoming<\/p>\n

Noodles<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Dad Calling<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The distraught father appears on the scene<\/p>\n

Holding a mobile phone to his ear, calling:<\/p>\n

I beg you, I beg you<\/em><\/p>\n

His \u2018you\u2019, right now, as the camera directs the eye<\/p>\n

Is sitting high, forty meters above the ground<\/p>\n

Perched on the edge of a high-voltage tower<\/p>\n

And the reason, according to the father<\/p>\n

Is no more than pretty minor things:<\/p>\n

Not buying pretty clothes as she has wanted<\/p>\n

Or picking on her over a meal<\/p>\n

But here she is, sitting pretty, pretty high<\/p>\n

Wearing thin, too, not only her dad\u2019s patience<\/p>\n

Till the snow, unknowing, comes<\/p>\n

And the waiting airbags, forty meters down below<\/p>\n

And half a meter thick<\/p>\n

Are keenly disappointed<\/p>\n

As the rescuer inches towards her<\/p>\n

Till she ropes her up, mobile phone in hand<\/p>\n

You now hear her dad calling there, decibels reduced<\/p>\n

I beg you, I beg you<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The Manhole Cover<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

If nothing is stealable in this unstealable world<\/p>\n

The manhole cover, of all things<\/p>\n

Remains hot property, for the unholy<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In this city, whose name escapes one<\/p>\n

Because of the fast flow of the read news<\/p>\n

A cover is uncovered, leaving the street gaping, in the middle<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The traffic flows<\/p>\n

The motorcyclists encircle it<\/p>\n

And, fortunately enough, no pedestrians have the sense to jump in<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Until a young man arrives, on his motorbike<\/p>\n

He stops, as the camera shows, and erects a broom<\/p>\n

As he makes phone calls<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Soon a policeman arrives on the scene<\/p>\n

And a truck, too, carrying a cover<\/p>\n

A size too large for the hole<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Years ago, one recalls<\/p>\n

In faraway Wuhan<\/p>\n

A tiny little girl disappears one afternoon<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Sucked in as if by the devil within<\/p>\n

Thanks to the young man, in this stealable city<\/p>\n

Whose broom serves as a reminder<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

That the country rises every morning<\/p>\n

With steable covers, for the gaping man<\/p>\n

Hole<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Wafer Thin<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Everything goes wafer thin, now<\/p>\n

My apple computer, for example<\/p>\n

An emaciated beauty woman, for another<\/p>\n

Thus it is no surprise when<\/p>\n

The ground, wafer thin, gave way in Shenzhen<\/p>\n

Revealing a four-storey-deep cave<\/p>\n

Right at the entrance<\/p>\n

It is with regret, the newsreader says<\/p>\n

That the doorman, 21, fell, instantly into it<\/p>\n

His body later discovered, miles away<\/p>\n

In a sewer<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Induction, a Short One   People often say In this country There is no need for fiction making Life is fiction Reality is surreality<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1653,77],"tags":[1654,1123,1674],"class_list":["post-14929","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-egophobia-77","category-english","tag-egophobia-77","tag-english","tag-ouyang-yu"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6DakB-3SN","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14929","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14929"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14929\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14930,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14929\/revisions\/14930"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14929"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}