July 1999 | Jacket 8 Contents | Homepage | Catalog | Search | Hsia YüFour poemstranslated by Steve Bradbury
¶ Bringing Her a Basket of Fruit (with audio)
The author of four volumes of poetry, Hsia Yü is a Taiwanese poet who lives in Paris, where she makes a living as a lyricist and translator. English translations of her poetry have appeared in anthologies such as Michele Yeh’s Modern Chinese Poetry, but these translations are the first to have been made with the endorsement and cooperation of the author. |
Bringing Her a Basket of Fruit
Today I go to this place and some guy there tells me not to come again/ I tell him I didn’t feel like going in any case/ Maybe others do but that’s another matter/ I go back to the flat I’m renting and steam a fish/ A friend comes over and we eat the fish together/ When we finish the fish he says he hasn’t been feeling too well lately/ Lost his job/ Missed his train to look for another one down south/ Those jobs just eat you alive he says/ You get a mortgage buy a house and a car and get yourself a woman/ You have some kids and if the kids grow up looking too much like you then you feel embarrassed/ And if they don’t grow up looking anything like you then you still feel embarrassed/ We talk awhile about the differences between being a landlord and a tenant/ Then we do it/ He asks how many lovers do you have and am I any different/ What a stupid question I say of course you’re different/ He keeps asking me how he is different/ I say you’re just different and if you really want to know maybe you’re really not so very different/ You can tell that just by looking at me he says/ You’re so weird always waiting for the worst to happen/ But when it does then I can settle down he says/ We look at the little mermaid on the VCR/ When the little mermaid loses her voice he cries/ We keep rewinding to the parts we like/ Steam another fish/ I lay out the Tarot cards to see if he’ll find a job and to see if we have any kind of future together/ You’re not going to find a job I say/ I’m not he says/ No point in even trying/ So what do I do/ There’s nothing you can do but anyhow now you can settle down now that you can expect the worst/ So do the cards say we’ll get married or something he asks/ Doesn’t look that way I say/ The cards aren’t accurate he says how do you know what the cards say is true/ You don’t understand what I’m saying so there’s no way I can make you understand/ So why do you believe in them/ I believe in them I say because the split second before I flip the cards over I know all the cause and effect relations since the universe began secretly work themselves out to like the final permutation/ Enough of this universe shit he says/ If it weren’t for this universe shit we wouldn’t be sitting here reading the cards/ I’m a little fed up here I say I’m thinking of moving/ Well why don’t you ask the cards and see if you’ll find a place/ I turn a card over/ The card says I will/ Well then ask if I can move in with you he says/ The card say no way/ We do it again/ But then I don’t know what to do/ And then I don’t know what to say either/ He leaves/ And I never see him again/ Perhaps there’ll be some other conclusion but I don’t know yet/ And then another friend calls who says I really don’t know if he loves me or not/ He loves you I say/ How do you know she says/ Because he doesn’t love me I say/ She hangs up/ I lay out the cards again/ I know that if I wait a little while she’ll call back to ask do you love him/ And sure enough she calls back/ I say I love him because I want to make her jealous/ I know she’ll call him right away to ask him if she loves you why don’t you love her/ She waits for him to say I love her/ She’s also waiting for the worst/ But later she settles down/ That’s because nobody loves her anyway/ She’s awfully weary of it all/ And so are we/ Later I move/ And I never do bring her a basket of fruit Driving Down to Lisbon
If certain hotels happen to have these exhibitionists Salsa
And still I have this secret yearning to be that sand dune Somehow
She took a fan and painted a bird on one side |
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Jacket 8 — July 1999
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