The Glaze of Time

A Poetic Cycle in Four Books

BOOK I: THE GLAZE OF TIME

1.  White Plum Blossom: The Glaze of Time

The first flower is unfinished porcelain

In blue kiln-transmutation, branches stretch

Like some ancient script no longer read—

Grandmother once used such strokes to record earthquakes:

Nineteen seventy-six, Tangshan, her sister's

Name beneath the rubble, split

Into two petals, still unjoined

War dies on the branch, frost buries itself in scrolls

The bud is a sealed archive

Containing the frost of dynasties past

And the unthawed snow of my childhood: that winter night

Father, with frost-cracked fingers, pruned

This same plum—scissors sounding

Like bones in darkness, gently

Dislocating

When they finally open

They speak a language of the future:

All blooming is delayed shattering—

In my thirtieth year, outside the emergency room

I finally read these words, while Mother

Woke from anesthesia, her ribs

Like crazing on porcelain, mapped

With unhealable patterns

I saw a bee wander into it

The gold it carried

Heavier than any dynasty—

Father's last sweater's

Brass button, buried beneath this plum

Twenty years now, slowly

Becoming nectar

And the wing's vibration

Precisely the frequency of blooming

Also my heartbeat, half a beat late

In response: each pulse

Calculating the precise time required

From whole to shattered

----

2.  Rain on Plum: Liquid Chronicle

Water droplets are the flower's exoskeleton

Its soft application to the liquid world—

Please permit me to exist transparently

To be misunderstood through refraction, to be gently

Spared by chaotic times

But rain disagrees. Rain is

The sky's interrogation, each drop

Demanding: why

Do you still not speak? The stamen is

A precise timing device, yellow

Gears meshing with spring's

Mainspring—and I have seen

Real gears: in Father's

Watch, which I dismantled after his death

Finding time to be nothing but

Rusted, metallic breathing

In the petal's folds

Hide smaller petals

Like the womb's

Infinite recursion, hiding

The sisters I never bore, never needed to bear:

In another possible universe they

Endure this rain for me, they

Learn, for me, to grow backward

Roots stretch toward sky

Seeking the cloud's mineral veins—there

Is iron, lead, the silicon dust in Father's lungs

He excavated all his life

Finally recalled, at this moment, by a plant

Through suckling

Flowers fall toward earth

Becoming the seed's

Inverse prophecy: not

Future opening to past, but

Past, in the future

Being re-experienced

Also becoming my

Path back to ruins and homeland—

I will die thus:

Head downward, feet upward

Like a newborn, lifted inverted

Like all

Beginnings too late

To cry out

----

3.  Red Plum: The Dialectic of Burning

Now, flame learns to branch

Each blossom an independent

Arson scene—

But no one calls the police

Because ash itself is

The most complete, most silent testimony

Red is light's wound

The spectrum torn

At its most painful segment

What I hide in bone and blood

Through dispersion and desolation

Still refusing extinction—

It was the birthmark in my womb, the doctor

Said it was a hemangioma, could

Rupture at any moment—I carry

This time bomb, have lived

Forty years, each

Tachycardia, its practice

For final

Burning

The bud tight as

An unsent suicide note—not

A love letter, a suicide note, addressed

To the self unborn

In fire

And blooming is

The send button finally pressed:

No address, no

Recipient, only

Burning itself as

The only delivery

I burn, therefore I am

—This is Descartes'

Unwritten corollary

Because he feared fire, feared

The witch

Burned in the fireplace

She too was once this red, this

Unreasonably blooming

In plum blossom's grammar

Being and vanishing

Are two tenses of the same verb—

Present and past, simultaneous

Like my

Left breast, atrophied after nursing

While the right

Still waits

For a child who will never

Arrive

Also I

Love and farewell

The same utterance—

Do you hear it?

That scream, and

That moan, in

Fire's frequency, completely

Identical

----

4.  Twin Blossoms: The Symmetry of Abyss

Two flowers share one stem

This is the botanical

Conjoined twins surgery—

No anesthesia, no

Informed consent, only

A blunt needle through

Two hearts, stitching them

Into one

Lifelong embrace?

Or a

Lifelong mutual

Consumption: I drink your

Sap, you drink my

Light, we grow

More alike, more like

The monster we

Mutually fear

They are mirrors

Never able to coincide—

Like me and Mother, we

Share the ghost of one umbilical cord

The way she looks at me

Forever carries

That horror of seeing one's

Own corpse

Petal veins are

Fingerprint variations—but

Whose fingerprint? The doctor's

First touch in the delivery room?

Father's, secretly comparing

My prints with Mother's

At night? Or that stranger's

Thirty years later, unlocking

My phone with the same print?

Each petal points

To a different murderer—

Spring, or time

Or years of wandering

Or the stranger who pressed the shutter

He photographed

Us, but kept only

Half: left is me

Right is a

Vanishing contour

Or my

Hand refusing to let go—

Now holding

Scissors, preparing

To cut this stem

But finding my fingers

Have grown into

The other flower's bones

----

5.  Flower and Emptiness: The Theology of Negative Form

Finally, the flower learns

To exist through absence:

You see the branch

Where once a flower bloomed

Now only

The shape of flower's absence—

A substance heavier than flower, like Mother's

Chair after death, the sunken

Cushion refusing

To spring back

Wind passes through this shape

Emitting specific frequency—

Not sound, but

Sound after excision, the

Scar tissue of surgery. I found

In Mother's belongings

Her removed uterus

Specimen, floating in formaldehyde

That cavity which once

Carried me, now

Floating in my

Chest cavity

The bee understands

But cannot translate for humans—

Some languages

Can only be spoken by non-existent things, like

Mother now speaking through

My silence

Through my

Each uncompleted

Sentence

And blue sky is the greater absence

All flowers

Blooming and withering simultaneously

That blue silence—

I saw this blue in Tibet, at five thousand

Meters altitude, air

Thin enough to become

Almost solid, you must

Chew it with your lungs to

Continue existing

Also I

Standing in place

Wordless waiting—

Not waiting, but abiding

Waiting has an object

Abiding is only

Maintaining this posture

Until posture itself

Becomes the only

Content

The sole coordinate after all things disperse—But coordinates themselves need

To be positioned, thus

I become the coordinate

That positions coordinates

The infinitely recursive

Center, the empty

Origin

----

6.  The Flower's Testament (To Future Pollen)

When the last petal falls

It becomes earth's

Appeal—but appeal

Requires court, requires

Judge, requires a language

Capable of understanding rot

And earth only

Silently receives, like that

Father who never

Answered any of my

Questions, now beneath

My feet

Continuing silence

I once opposed eternity with brevity

Fragility against forgetting

Scent against

The grammar of void—But

Scent is

The most unreliable evidence

It will transform in the first

Witness's nose, will in wind's

Cross-examination

Completely dissipate

And you, future flowers

Will find in my rotting

Rhetoric

This ungerminated

Comma—not

Period, because

The story has not

Ended, only

Paused at a place

Without breath, waiting

For the next voice

To misread it

As beginning

Spring is not a season

But some

Persistent grammatical error:

We call it life

While the universe calls it

Light's temporary bending—

In physics, this is called

Refraction, in psychology

This is called illusion

In my body

This is called menstruation

Each month, a small

Blood loss

Small rebirth

Small imitation of eternity

And failure

I once bloomed

Is the hardest answer to all this—

But "answer" itself

Needs answering

Thus I leave

This empty

Parenthesis, waiting

For you to fill it

With your respective

Blooming

Or extend it

With your respective

Absence

(　　　　　　　　)

----

BOOK II: THE FAITH OF GRASSES

7.  Green Pine: The Geology of Silence

Roots are downward faith

Drilling into rock strata

Gnawing darkness's minerals—

My father's teeth, thirty years underground

Gnawed into

The same strata

The same silence

After his death, I pried open his mouth

Found those black

Dental roots, already

Grown into coal's

Embryonic form

Rings do not record time

Only record

Each time wind breaks it

The posture of growing back—

Not courage, but

Unchosen

Growth. Like that woman

Raped, who gave birth

To me, she never

Told me the truth, only

Each year on my birthday

Planted one

Pine, now that

Forest

Higher than her silence

Denser

More impenetrable

Bark is earth's old skin

Cracked, yet not shedding—

I saw such skin

In the psychiatric hospital

That woman claiming to be

Pine reincarnated, she

Refused speech

Only used fingernails

To carve on walls

Ring after ring

She said thus

Time cannot see

Her, she can

Pretend to have been dead

For many years

It does not bloom

Uses silence

Against all rhetoric of profuse flowers—But silence itself

Is also rhetoric

A more expensive

Metaphor, requiring

A whole lifetime

To pay its

Interest

When snow presses down

It folds weight

Into upward curve—Not

Resistance, but

Bending, letting weight

Slide along the arc to

Both sides, like that girl

Who learned to transform father's beating

Into dance, her spine

Now permanently curved

Like a fully drawn bow

Ready to shoot something

Into sky, or

Only maintaining this

Posture, because releasing

Means breaking

Death is not endpoint

But pine needles

Piercing winter's

One by one

Awake stitches—

Mending what?

Heaven's crack?

Or only letting

Cold press tighter

Against skin, like

A tailored

Shroud, sewn with green

Thread, because

The dead insist

On looking like they're still alive

----

8.  Green Bamboo: The Architecture of Emptiness

One section empty, one section solid

Like life

Supported alternately by

Blank space and weight—But

Who decides which section

Is empty, which

Is solid? I cut open

Grandfather's diary, found

He wrote only one sentence each year

The rest

Blank space, like

Some code, or

Simply poverty, unable to afford

More paper

It does not compete with profuse flowers

Only weaves wind

Into transparent flute sound—But wind does not wish

To be woven, it prefers

To break what tries

To capture it

So bamboo learned

To weave only after

Wind passes through

Using wind's

Remaining vibration

As the only material

The bamboo joint is time's checkpoint

Each breakthrough

Leaves a hard

Memorial—

Memorial of what? That self

Lost between

Joint and

Joint? I measured those

Distances, found they exactly equal

My two suicide attempts'

Intervals

First, age fifteen

Second, age thirty

Now, forty-five

Waiting for the third

Joint to swell

It bends

Not submission

But giving storm

A path

To pass through—But

Also giving itself

An observation angle, from

Below looking at what once

Held high

How in storm

Expose their roots

Those ugly bifurcations

Those never

Seen dampness

Cut it open

Inside no heart

Only emptiness running through—But this emptiness

Has shape, is

An elongated exclamation mark

Or a stretched

Zero, symbolizing what remains

After all subtraction

That which cannot

Be subtracted

This is its

Secret skeleton standing a thousand years—Not

Skeleton, but skeleton's

Absence, the space

Left behind, what we call

Wind, call music

Call what we

Cannot become ourselves

So can only inhabit

----

9.  Pure Lotus: The Metaphysics of Water

Born of mud, yet unstained by mud—

This is lie, or

Only a more refined

Way of staining. I tested

Lotus cells, found

Mud never left, only

Renamed as

Nutrition, absorbed as

The dark undertone

Of those white parts

Like soul

Passing through world

Yet unbought by dust—But soul itself is

Dust's more arrogant

Form, dust learning

Self-reference, then producing

Illusion of standing

Outside dust to judge

Dust, this precisely being

Dust's most cunning strategy

Petals are water's wings

Supporting a mass of

Unsinking moonlight—But moonlight moves away

From earth at three centimeters per year

These petals support

Lighter and lighter

Past, becoming memory's

Present, what we

Cannot prevent becoming light

The lotus pod is silent abacus

Calculating

Human gains and losses—But never speaking, because

Calculation itself is

A loss, gain's instant

Beginning to disappear, like those

Lotus seeds, they never asked

To be calculated, to be included

In any account, they only

Wait to be swallowed by a bird

Carried by one forgetting

To farther mud

The lotus heart

Is bitter—not

Truth, but truth's

Bitterness simulation, what body automatically produces

When we cannot speak truth, like tears

Like blood, like these poems

They were never truth, only

Truth's bitterness extract

When it withers

It does not fall

Only slowly

Dissolves back into water—Not

Dissolution, but returning to that

Never truly separated

Whole, like infant returning

To amniotic fluid, like dead returning

To memory, like these words

Finally abandoning their insistence as words

Becoming ink, becoming water, becoming

That unreadable

Darkness

----

10.  Withered Lotus: The Broken Temple

Summer returns all profusion

To water's surface—Not

Returns, but confiscated by water

Like those houses

Confiscated by banks

After father's death, we lost

That only dwelling

Now summer too has lost

Its dwelling, these lotus leaves

Once summer's roof

Leaf breaks

Like temple's toppled stone pillar—But temple never existed, these

Pillars only lotus leaves temporarily

Impersonating a dignity

Like the posture we still maintain

After losing everything, that so-called

Integrity

Yet still

Supporting the last piece

Of unbowing backbone—But backbone needs wind to

Confirm, without wind it is only

A broken stem, some plant's

Failed attempt

To establish a standing concept in water

Water ripples are time's wrinkles

Circle after circle

Flooding withered roots—Roots continue rotting underwater

Or growing, we cannot

Distinguish these two processes

Like we cannot distinguish mother's

Aging from her maturing, she

Simultaneously becomes older and

More complete

It does not hide, does not conceal

Spreads all decay

For world to see—But world is looking elsewhere

Its spreading is only

A lonelier collecting, like that beggar

Displaying wounds on the street

He knows no one will look, yet

Each morning spreads them anew

Because this is his only work

Brokenness

Is life

Most honest appearance—But honesty itself is

A kind of brokenness, completeness's

Unattainability

We praise brokenness only because

We fear complete oppression

That violence of perfection

The root hides deep in mud

Darkness's

Only complete faith—But root is also broken, only

Its brokenness hidden by darkness, like

Those faiths we practice alone at night

They never ask to be

Seen, because seeing means being

Measured, compared, found insufficiently

Complete

----

11.  Wild Grass: The Cosmology of Humility

Unnamed, unpraised

Born in rock crevice, dies in frost—But rock crevice itself is

A naming, stone's naming of wild grass

Hardness reserving for softness

That position, like society reserving for poor

Those crevices, those places

To insert but not to root

Yet roots drill

Into world's hardest places—Not

Drill, but squeezed by hardness

Into that shape, root never

Chose its direction, only filled itself

In pressure's gaps, like those mosses

Growing in subway cracks

They are not brave, only unable to move

Wild grass's universe

Is small

Small enough to hold only

One breeze, one drop of rain

One inch of sunlight—But this inch

Obtained through abandoning all other inches

Is extreme concentration

Like that man in solitary cell

Thirty years, he finally learned

To calculate time with this inch of sunlight

To judge season with this breeze

To measure distance with this drop of rain

From ceiling to floor, exactly equal to

Ten thousand drops of rain's length

Wildfire came

Horse hooves trampled

Sickle reaped—But wild grass never truly experienced these

It only experienced its own versions

That self burning more intensely in wildfire

That self bending deeper under hooves

That self growing faster before sickle

Each external violence only activates some internal program

It still

Raises head from ashes—But ashes are also soil

What remains after burning

That which can be called pure impurity, wild grass

Raising head is not resistance, but confirming that purity

Still enough to support humble

Growth, enough to let green become

Green again, even if this green

Has no relation to previous green

Even if this is already tenth or hundredth generation

They share one name, but never

Share memory

All human nobility

Should bow to it—But bowing itself is

A noble posture, looking down from above

Wild grass needs not this watching, it only

Continues growing, during nobility's bow

Already grown another millimeter, this millimeter

Not response to nobility, only continuation of

Time occupation, extreme selfishness

Also extreme selflessness

Because it never thought for whom to grow

Living

Itself is

Noblest medal—But medal requires awarding, living only

Continues living, requires no awarding

Even requires not being called living, only those

Cells continuing division, those chlorophylls continuing

Conversion, those processes we cannot name

They are happening

In rock crevices, in ashes, in all places we

Think impossible, this is

Universe itself, not cosmology, only universe

Conducting its own unlearnable

Curriculum

----

12.  Fallen Leaves: Earth's Reply

The tree writes a whole year's心事

On leaves—But leaves are material

That cannot be preserved, they must

Be destroyed in autumn

This is the contract between tree and earth

Annual sacrifice, using

Green death to exchange for

Brown survival

Wind reads again and again

Finally sends it

Back to where it departed—But the place of departure is no longer there

Redefining arrival, soil is not

Root's hometown, only a temporary

Transfer station, leaves will there

Be decomposed, translated

Into another language, one roots cannot

Read, because roots only understand upward

Grammar, while soil only understands downward

Rhetoric

Fallen leaf is not farewell

But earth

Received reply—But reply implies a letter was once

Sent, who sent that original letter?

Seed's application to become tree

Sent from soil? Or tree itself

In some spring suddenly realizing it needed

A correspondent, sending to void that

Addressless letter? We cannot determine this

Dialogue's origin, like we cannot determine life itself

Comes from soil or from that light accidentally

Falling into soil

Each piece

Writes:

I came, I loved

I did not fail time—But these words in rotting

Process gradually blur, not because of

Moisture or bacteria, but because

These words themselves are self-negating

Statements, "I" becoming "non-I"

"Came" becoming "never"

"Loved" becoming "unable" to determine if loved

Only "did not fail" remains clear

Because it has lost specific reference

Become pure posture, empty shell

Fillable by anything

It rots, not disappears

But dismantles itself

Into nutrients—But dismantling requires violence, requires those

Tiny teeth, those decomposers

They conduct slow eating inside leaf

Not devouring, but more refined tasting

Each bite leaving part uneaten

As respect for the eaten

As delay, letting leaf before becoming

Nutrient completely

Still maintain leaf-ness for a time

This delay is called

Rotting's aesthetics

Return to tree roots

Return to spring

Return to

Endless cycle—But return implies debt, leaf is repaying

What it borrowed from roots

That water, those minerals, that which can be called life's

Loan, but what is interest? That heat

Produced in rotting? That blank

Left after decomposition? Or only that

Must continue repaying feeling

Even after debt is cleared, even

After spring has forgotten what was lent

----

BOOK III: LIGHT AND DUST

13.  Moonlight: Silver Rhetoric

The moon does not speak

Only tunes light

To gentlest frequency—But gentleness is frequency

Meaning it can be tuned, can be interfered

I saw this interference in field hospital

When searchlight suddenly illuminated those

Wounded trying to transfer at night, their wounds

Under strong light suddenly becoming something else

No longer pain's carrier, but light's

Reflective surface, pure physical phenomenon

Illuminating all wounds

In world too afraid to speak—But moonlight does more, it illuminates those

Too afraid to be too afraid to speak

Those wounds that have learned complete silence

Like the scar on mother's abdomen

She never told me its source, only

Each full moon suddenly beginning to itch

As if that scar under moonlight

Re-splitting, re-experiencing that never-told cutting

It is sky's blank space

Night's

Silver rhetoric—But rhetoric needs audience

Needs reader capable of interpreting blank space

And night never guarantees such reader's existence

Moon only continues its rhetoric

Even if below is only desolate battlefield

Or equally desolate prosperous city

They look identical under moonlight

This sameness is moon's only

Political stance

Spreading longing

Into ground-covering

Unfreezing frost—But not freezing means unable to preserve

This frost disappears before sunrise

Leaves no trace except that slight dampness

Mistaken for dew's

Forgetting, I once walked in this dampness

Thinking it was some message from moon

Later understood it was only atmosphere's

Physical phenomenon, unrelated to longing

Unrelated to me

I reach to cup it

Only hold

A handful of transparent cold—But cold itself is holding

Skin's confirmation of temperature difference

Even without moon this cold would exist

Just would not be called moonlight's cold

Would not be given that poetic weight

What I hold is actually my palm's shadow

Under moonlight temporarily obtaining

That cold texture

Turns out most distant warmth

Carries

Untouchable despair—But despair itself is also warmth

Continuous heating of warmth's memory

Like those frozen to death

Feeling heat at final moment

Beginning to remove clothes

Moonlight provides exactly this desperate warmth

Making you continuously reach, continuously miss

Continuously maintain this posture

Until posture itself becomes only content

----

14.  Falling Snow: Draft Paper of All Things

Sky freezes all language

Into white

Falling—But white is not nothing, is all colors

Simultaneously existing, visual noise

Eye's information overload

When snow falls world does not become simpler

Only becomes unreadable

Like that document covered with correction fluid

You know there are words below

But cannot know what words

This knowing something is there but not knowing what

Is called snow's epistemology

Covering mountains, also covering wounds—But covering is not healing, only delayed

Exposure, snow will melt

Will re-reveal those wounds

And because covered they look fresher

More painful, like reopened scars

Flow more blood than never-covered wounds

Snow knows this, it just does not care

Or more accurately, it just cannot stop

This covering, like that person who cannot stop writing

Even knowing all writing will be erased

Snow is unwritten poem

All things

Before returning to chaos

Cleanest appearance—But cleanliness itself is violence

Elimination of difference

Temporary dissolution of all boundaries

In snow you cannot distinguish

Road from field, cannot distinguish

Your foot from ground

This indistinguishability is called sublime

Or called danger, depending on whether

You can find recognizable landmark before snow stops

It does not praise blooming

Only praises

Quiet covering—But quiet is auditory absence

And covering is visual presence

Snow conducts both operations simultaneously

Making you hear your own heartbeat

While making you unable to see your own traces

This paradox is called solitude

Or called freedom, depending on whether

You can endure that sound without echo

Each snowflake

Is unique—But this uniqueness is statistical fact

Not experiential, no one can

Before snowflake lands distinguish its uniqueness

They only after landing are uniformly called snow

That white substance

That can be stepped on, shaped, polluted

Uniqueness is only theoretical comfort

Like we know each person is unique

But before death this uniqueness cannot be

Distinguished

Yet at landing

Abandons itself—But abandonment implies once having

And snowflake never had itself

They only in falling process temporarily maintain

That shape called snowflake

Once touching ground they begin becoming other things

Becoming water, becoming ice, becoming

What is no longer called snowflake

This becoming other is not abandonment

Is more thorough realization

Is final liberation from illusion called self

Snow stops

World becomes a wordless

White paper—But white paper has already been written on

By those footprints, those ruts

By that unavoidable pollution

Only these writings are not clear enough

Not enough to form what can be called meaning

They are only traces, some waiting to be further covered

Or further exposed potential texts

Plum blossom is not first stroke

Only first stroke we notice

Because its color difference from white

Is large enough to be called aesthetic

----

15.  Morning Fog: Blurred Truth

Morning uses fog

To gently block world—But gently is misleading, fog is not

Soft veil, is forced myopia

Eye's ability temporarily deprived

You cannot choose to see or not see

You can only see fog itself

That gray substance

Between existence and non-existence

This between is called朦胧美学

Or called pollution, depending on your

Geographic location

Truth need not be too clear

Too sharp

Will scratch world—But this need not is whose decision?

Fog did not ask anyone's opinion

Before implementing this blocking

Like that censorship system

Implemented without asking anyone's opinion

They share same logic

Making everything soft, touchable without injury

While making everything unrecognizable

Requiring dependence on some authority

To tell you what it is

Distant mountains hide

Rivers silence

All things have

Soft outlines—But softness is tactile property

And outline is visual property

Fog confuses these two sensations

Making you want to touch what is actually distant

While making you fear touching what is actually near

This distance confusion is called poetic

Or called vertigo, depending on whether

You can maintain standing before fog clears

Like心事

Need not be spoken

To be most moving—But心事 is not chosen not spoken

Is forced unable to be spoken

Because no language can precisely describe

That feeling in fog

Because all language presupposes clear reference

And fog-world refuses this reference

心事 is only fog's internal version

That which cannot be named so cannot be resolved

State's continuous existence

When fog clears

Sunlight slowly reveals answer—But answer itself is also fog

Is another form of unclarity

Only this unclarity is called brightness

Because it allows shadow's existence

Allows that aesthetic effect called contrast

And fog-world refuses shadow

Refuses contrast, refuses that which can be called

Dramatic tension

This refusal is more radical reality

Only we have learned to call this reality blur

And that drama clarity

Turns out truest world

Never shows itself clearly

Only uses gentleness

To包容 all appearances—But gentleness itself is appearance

Is fog's undifferentiated covering appearance

And reality may not be gentle

May only be cruel to the point of unrecognizability

So looks like gentleness

Like extreme noise at certain frequency

Suddenly sounds like silence

Fog may only be extreme clarity at certain density

Suddenly looks like blur

----

16.  Stars: Punctuation of Night Sky

Stars are night sky's punctuation

Some are commas

Some are periods

Some are

Ellipses that never finish speaking—But this punctuation is misreading

Humans projecting their grammar onto universe

Stars do not know they are punctuation

They are only burning, or more accurately

Only reflecting that called burning's past

Their twinkling is not semantic hesitation

Is atmospheric interference

Is light refracting through different density air

This physical phenomenon is called twinkling

Given poetic weight

They are silent

Yet替 all insomnia people

Staying lit—But staying lit is not替 anyone

Is unclosable state

Like that unstoppable pain

Or unstoppable memory

Stars cannot choose not to shine

Like insomnia people cannot choose not to wake

This unchoosable parallel is called resonance

Or called solitude's two forms

Temporarily meeting under night sky

Then each continuing their unstoppable

替 all unspoken words

Hanging—But hanging implies may fall may not fall

And starlight is already falling

Already rushing toward us at 300,000 km per second

Only this rushing requires time

Requires years, centuries, millennia

So what we see is always past stars

Always those that may no longer exist

This delay is called light-year

Is distance's temporal version

Also time's distance version

Is that interval we cannot cross's

Precise measurement

替 all distant longing

Remembering—But remembering requires memory

And stars have no memory

They only repeat that called nuclear fusion

Only convert hydrogen to helium

While releasing energy

This process repeated billions of years

Will continue billions of years

Until fuel exhausted then collapse

Or explode

This repetition without memory is called eternity

Or called mechanics, depending on whether

You believe in this repetition exists

What can be called meaning

Universe is large

Large to boundless—But boundless is mathematical concept

Not bodily experience

We cannot experience boundless

We can only experience our own limited boundaries

Skin's boundary, breath's boundary

Consciousness's boundary

Universe's largeness is only this boundary's

External name

Is that which we cannot enter so can only name

This naming is called敬畏

Or called fear's aesthetic transformation

Universe is also small

Small to one star

Can illuminate

One whole lonely heart—But illumination is not entering

Only lets that called solitude's state

Temporarily be seen, confirmed

Not solved

Stars cannot solve anything

They are only there

Only continuing that unstoppable burning

Or reflecting

And we are only here

Only continuing that unstoppable

Meaning-seeking attempt

This parallel is called poetry

Or called futility, depending on whether

You can fall asleep before dawn arrives

----

17.  Wind: Formless Migration

Wind has no hometown

Whole life migrating—But no hometown is not tragedy

Is liberation from that called roots' violence

Wind needs not prove where it comes from

Needs not carry any document called identity

It only moves

Only seeks balance between different pressures

This seeking is called weather

Or called history's atmospheric version

Passing through blooming

Passing through leaf-fall

Passing through human

Gathering and parting—But passing through is not experiencing

Only physical contact

Molecule colliding with molecule

Energy transfer

Wind does not know blooming is beautiful

Or leaf-fall is sad

These meanings are human post-facto赋予

Are that called lyric's cognitive bias

Wind only continues its calculation

Calculating temperature, calculating humidity

Calculating that called comfort or disaster's index

It takes away scent

Also takes away sigh—But taking away is not preserving

Is more thorough dispersal

Making scent untraceable

Making sigh unrecognizable in source

Wind is anonymous force

Making everything become everything's possibility

While making everything lose becoming specific's possibility

This paradox is called freedom

Or called void, depending on whether

You can endure that existence without source

Takes away profusion

Also takes away ruin—But profusion and ruin in wind

Become indistinguishable

They are only particles

That which can be transported

Dust, pollen, or that called history's debris

Wind does not distinguish their value

Only according to weight, according to shape

Decides how far can be transported

This choice according to physical property

Not cultural value

Is called nature

Or called cruel neutrality

Yet never leaves

Its own traces—But traces need fixed state

And wind refuses fixation

It only leaves traces on other things

On sand dunes leaving ripples

On water surface leaving wrinkles

On skin leaving dryness

These traces are called wind's effects

But not wind itself

Wind itself can never be captured

Never be displayed

Never be used as evidence

This cannot is called spirit

Or called deception, depending on whether

You believe in that which cannot be proven

----

18.  Cloud: Exile of Sky

Cloud is sky's exile

Homeless—But homeless is choice

Refusal of that called belonging's violence

Cloud refuses to become sky's part

Refuses to be fixed at any coordinate

It chooses that called suspension's state

That neither rising nor falling

Middle zone

This choice is called freedom

Or called rootless curse, depending on whether

You can endure that standing without ground

Drifting with wind

Gathering then dispersing

Dispersing then gathering—But this gathering-dispersing is not passive

Is practice of form

Cloud trying various possible shapes

Various possible densities

Various possible edges

It is sky's sketch

That which can be constantly modified

Until that called rain's decision is made

Until that called weight's limit is reached

It returns rain

To earth—But return implies once borrowed

And cloud is only executing cycle

Is that called water's substance

Seeking various possible states

Liquid, gas, solid

Cloud is only one phase

One temporary form

Rain is not return

Only continuation of this seeking

Only from untouchable state

Transforming to touchable state

This transformation is called falling

Or called坠落, depending on whether

You can endure that impact

Returns shadow

To mountains and rivers—But shadow does not belong to mountains and rivers

Is only effect of blocked light

Is absence's appearance

Cloud provides this blocking

Only temporary

Only when it passes

Do mountains obtain that called depth's dimension

Transform from plane to立体

This transformation is called shadow's aesthetics

Or called depression's natural version

Hides all wandering's bitterness

In unseen high altitude—But bitterness needs to be felt

And cloud cannot feel

It is only changing

Only transforming from one form to another

This transformation may involve energy consumption

May involve that called evaporation's loss

But is not bitterness

Bitterness is human projecting own feeling onto cloud

Then sympathizing with this projected self

This process is called lyric

Or called narcissism's atmospheric version

Sometimes it stops above plum branch

Gently staying—But gently is relative concept

Relative to cloud's weight

For plum branch this staying may be oppression

Is that called shadow's pressure

Is cold produced by deprived light

Plum branch must endure this staying

Until cloud continues its migration

Until that called sunlight's justice returns

Like fearing to disturb

That one

Brief yet determined blooming—But disturbing is intention

And cloud has no intention

It is only there

Only continuing its change

Plum blossom's blooming or withering

Is not cloud's concern

Only human juxtaposing these two temporary forms

Then giving them narrative called relationship

This narrative is called poetic

Or called misunderstanding's aesthetic transformation

----

BOOK IV: TESTIMONY OF LIFE

19.  Wound: Soft Armor

All wounds

Are seals time stamps on skin—But seals need to be stamped on documents

To take effect, while wounds are stamped directly

On skin, that which cannot be transferred's

Certification, body's ID card

That which cannot be forged because cannot be copied's

Identification, each wound points to specific

Moment, specific angle, specific force

This specificity is called memory

Or called history's flesh version

Hurt, cried

After scabbing

Becomes hardest place—But hardness is not protection

Is more vulnerable state

Because scabbed part loses sensation

Loses that called sensitivity's ability

It makes you unable to perceive slight touch

Unable to perceive possible danger

Until that danger becomes large enough

To tear again that called hard surface

Wound does not speak

Yet替 me

Remembers all experience—But remembering is not language

Is tissue's change

Is that called scar's new tissue produced in healing

It is thicker than original tissue

Less elastic

It remembers not event's content

But event's shape

That which can be touched but cannot be read's

Braille, body's encrypted message

Written to itself

All falling

All strength to stand again—But standing again is not strength's proof

Only unchosen continuation

Like that unchosen healing process after being cut

Only body's automatic program

Not will's victory

We give this process meaning only because

We need that called narrative's continuity

Need to believe between falling and standing

Exists what can be called growth

It is soft armor

Protecting heart's

Cleanest place—But clean is relative state

Relative to external pollution's internal

And wound itself is pollution

Is that called bacteria's invasion

Is that called inflammation's defense's side effect

Internal was not always clean

Only after wound do we realize clean's fragility

Begin establishing that called protection's isolation

Letting me after experiencing沧桑

Still willing

To believe warmth, believe light—But believing is not wound's result

Is wound's premise

Is that ability existing before being hurt

Wound may weaken this ability

May make that called trust more difficult

More needing proof

But may also make it stronger

More urgent

Because knowing warmth and light's scarcity

Because knowing they may disappear again

This knowing is called maturity

Or called post-traumatic stress

----

20.  Waiting: Silent Epicenter

Waiting is silent epicenter

Surface calm

Inside already

Earth-shaking—But epicenter is not calm

Is destruction's origin

Is energy's most concentrated release

Waiting is not release

Is suppression

Forcing that earth-shaking beneath surface

Letting it continue shaking inside

Continue producing that called anxiety's aftershocks

This suppression is called civilization

Or called self-destruction's delayed strategy

Waiting for one flower to bloom

Waiting for one person to return

Waiting for one snowfall

Waiting for one

Delayed confession—But these waitings are not equivalent

They involve different time scales

Flower's cycle is one year

Person's cycle is one lifetime

Snow's cycle is climate change

Confession's cycle is may never arrive

This inequivalence makes waiting incomparable

Inexchangeable

Cannot use one waiting to offset another

Each waiting must be separately endured

Separately calculate its interest and loss

Time is slow

Slow to each second

Being stretched—But stretching is subjective experience

Is that called dopamine's neurotransmitter

Secretion decrease in waiting state

Produced effect

Time itself has no speed

Only our perception of it changes

This perception change is called pain

Or called meditation's side effect

Depending on whether you can transform

This stretching into usable state

Time is also fast

Fast to whole life

In waiting

Quietly finishes—But quietly is illusion

Because in waiting process we ignore

All other things

Ignore those not-waited-for things

Those that only happen, only exist

Only flash in waiting's gaps

Life is not finished in waiting

Is finished in ignoring

Waiting is only that called focus's violence

One form

----

21.  Farewell: Unfinished Poem

Farewell is not ending

Is one

Unfinished poem—But unfinished is not aesthetic choice

Is uncompletable state

Is that called language's material itself's

Insufficiency

Is that sudden realization at farewell moment

All words are not precise enough

All sentences are not complete enough

That aphasia

This aphasia is called poetic

Or called trauma's language version

First half writes encounter

Second half

Leaves for time to continue—But time is not author

Only that called forgetting's editor

It will delete some parts

Will rearrange some orders

Will let that poem become unrecognizable

Become like another poem

Or like never written

This editing is called memory

Or called history's literary criticism

Some farewells are silent

Some farewells are tearful

Some farewells

One turn

Is one lifetime—But these classifications are post-facto organization

Are that called narrative's violence

Forcing those unclassifiable moments

Into some order

Actually all farewells are simultaneously

Silent, tearful, one turn is one lifetime's

This simultaneity is called reality

Or called that which cannot be written

But need not regret

All departure

Is another form of existence—But another form is not existence

Is that called trace's thing

Is that absence left after departure

Is that shape perceivable but unfillable

Like flower withering is not becoming mud

Only from state called flower

Transforming to state unnamable

Like star sinking is not entering sea

Only light's unable to continue arriving

Like love is not hidden in heart

Only unable to find expressible form

So can only be misunderstood as existence

----

22.  Longing: Breathing Across Space

Longing is breathing across space

You cannot see

Yet can clearly perceive—But clear is illusion

Is that called familiarity's feeling

Produced effect

Actually you cannot know if this breathing

Really comes from that longed-for person

Or is only your own breathing's echo

In chest cavity producing that called resonance's

Physical phenomenon

This indistinguishability is called love

Or called solitude's self-projection

It gently rises and falls in bloodline—But bloodline is not channel

Is that called circulation's closed system

Longing cannot truly leave body

Cannot truly reach that longed-for object

It only continues flowing inside

Continuing to be oxidized, purified

Transformed into that which can be called life's

Maintenance's ordinary substance

This transformation is called time's cure

Or called betrayal's biology

It passes through mountains and seas

Passes through day and night

Passes through years—But passing through is not arriving

Only passing, only leaving in space

That which can be called trajectory's thing

Then continues diffusing in other directions

Until that called concentration's indicator

Becomes low enough

Cannot be detected by any instrument

Low enough to not be called longing

Only be called background noise

Or called air's ordinary composition

Falls where you

Once stayed—But staying is past tense

And place has already changed

That called your existence has been

Covered by other existence

Filled by other breathing

Crossed by other trajectories

Longing falls finding that place

Is no longer that place

This discovery is called loss

Or called reality's education

When plum blossom opens

It is scent—But scent is molecular movement

Is that which any nose can perceive

Not specific to longing

Only at specific moment

Specifically associated by specific person

This association is called poetic

Or called conditioned reflex's aesthetic version

When plum blossom opens, it is first

Scent, then longing's carrier

This priority is called materialism

Or called existence's first nature

When moonlight falls

It is cold—But cold is temperature difference

Is heat exchange between skin and environment

Moonlight itself has no temperature

Only reflects sun's light

That eight-minute-traveled old light

No longer warm light

Longing as cold is this delay's effect

Is knowing that warmth is already past tense

Then produced that called nostalgia's

Physiological reaction

When wind passes

It is one

Unheard light call—But unheard includes that light-called person

Includes that light-calling person oneself

This double unheard is called longing's essence

Is that which must be sent but cannot be received

Signal

Is that sound wave consuming itself in air

Until completely dissipating

This dissipation is called beauty

Or called ineffective tragedy

----

23.  Solitude: Abyss of Self

Solitude is self's abyss

Jump in

Then see

Truest self—But true self is not whole

Is that called fragments' collection

Is that in solitude suddenly beginning to speak

Various voices, they contradict each other

Negate each other, try to become that called I's

Center

This competition is called self

Or called multiple personality's daily version

Need not fear solitude

It is soul's

Best practice—But practice implies progress

Implies some state called better

And solitude is only state itself

Has no direction, no purpose

Only is there

Only continues that called existence's

Basic action

Like that person locked in solitary cell

He is not practicing

Only surviving

Only finding various methods to fill that called time's

Emptiness

Lets you beyond喧嚣

Hear inner voice—But voices are many, not one

But countless

They speak simultaneously

Demand to be heard simultaneously

Cover each other simultaneously

That called inner's place is not quiet

Is noisier

Is that called喧嚣's internal version

Is that which cannot be eliminated by closing ears's

Noise

Like one plum branch

Alone blooming in cold winter—But alone is not choice

Is that called season's force

Is that called species' restriction

Plum cannot choose to bloom in spring

Cannot choose to fruit in summer

It only at designated time

Does designated action

This designated is called fate

Or called biology's determinism

Like one star

Alone shining in night sky—But star is not alone

Only looks alone

Only because that called distance's effect

Actually it may have countless companion stars

May be conducting that called gravity's dance

With other stars

Only this dance cannot be perceived by us

Only our solitude projected onto star

Then reflected back

Called resonance

Or called misunderstanding's astronomy

Solitude to extreme

Then merges with universe

Into one—But merging into one is not solution

Is more thorough disappearance

Is that called boundary's thing's

Complete dissolution

And boundary is self's existence's premise

No boundary, no self

No solitude

Only that called substance's universal state

Only that which existed before universe's big bang

That called singularity's thing

This return is called liberation

Or called death's cosmic version

----

24.  I Once Bloomed: Existence's Response

In flower's name

I walked through time's long river—But name is not identity

Only temporary borrowing

Only at that called spring's moment

Temporarily permitted to use this shape

This color, this called scent's

Chemical signal

Time is not long river

Only that called entropy increase's process

Only that sliding from order to disorder

And I am only temporarily maintained

Some order's illusion in this sliding

Using brevity

Against eternity—But against is not battle

Only posture

Only that knowing cannot win

But still maintaining standing's

Posture

Eternity is not enemy

Only that called background's thing

Only that which continues existing whether I stand or not

Brevity is not weapon

Only that called life's

Basic attribute

Is that which must end so must begin's

Logic

Using fragility

Against forgetting—But forgetting is not enemy

Only that called memory's function's

Normal operation

Only that which must clear to continue receiving's

Mechanism

Fragility is not strategy

Only unchosen state

Is that called organic substance's

Basic characteristic

Is that which must depend on environment

Must be possibly destroyed at any moment's

Existence way

This way is called life

Or called error's evolutionary result

I once stood in frost and snow

Bloomed in wind and rain

Reborn in ashes—But these are not my choices

Only that called gene's program

Executing

Only that called environment's stimulus

Triggering

Only that called reaction's physical process

Happening

I am only that called place's thing

That space where these processes unfold

This space is called body

Or called prison's biology

Leaving existence's traces

In emptiness—But traces are not existence

Only existence's effect

Only that ability to continue affecting other substances

After me

This ability is called causality

Or called heritage's physical version

Emptiness is not background

Is that called possibility's space

Is that which existed before me

Continues existing after me

I only temporarily occupied some possibilities

Only temporarily excluded other possibilities

Need not ask meaning

Life's whole answer

Only one sentence:

I once bloomed—But "once" is past tense

Is that already ended so can be summarized's

State

And now I am withering

In that called death's process

This process cannot be called blooming

Cannot be called any namable state

Only that which must be experienced but cannot be described's

Transformation

This transformation is called mystery

Or called daily life's ultimate form

This is

To universe

Hardest, gentlest

Most eternal

Answer—But answer needs to be received

Needs listener that can be called universe

And universe is only that called space's sum

Only that called substance's distribution

It cannot receive, cannot respond

Cannot confirm whether this called answer

Really exists, really is effective

Really deserves to be called answer

This unconfirmability is called freedom

Or called absurdity's existentialism

Or, only a

More humble saying:

I, once, tried, to bloom

This, itself, is

To that called unable-to-bloom's force

A kind of response

Not answer, only

Response

Not to universe, only

To that called possibility

To that which before me and after me

Continues existing

That called blooming's

Possibility

A kind of

Temporary

Occupation

And

Release.