READING LIAO YIWU’S GULAG BALLADS

No need to imagine. No need for metaphor.

No need to write. Yet we still create.

Our pens can’t sway the iron hand, the hand

that will one day break us.

No need to find a simile for beast, no need

to show respect. Ten years ago I tried,

my pen dipped in ash:

no need to die, but blood must spill on snow.

No need to demand poetic art, Pound alone

saw steel bars as staves for music: brightness ascends.

The pen composes literature, not history;

no need to touch—memory’s nobility doesn’t require it.

In China, so many people from 1990

surging toward 2002. Nihilism hurts me.

Martyrs or businessmen, Gulag or Beijing:

someone else takes up the pen, inscribing ghosts.

No need to heal. Ink seeps from wounds.