DAISY IN SPRINGTIME by Mowo Er

DAISY IN SPRINGTIME

by Mowo Er

Who knows if the Milky Way has seasons

and their stars tend to stray off in the spring

to cascade on Earth.

Is that why she encounters a small cosmic force

when catching Line 10

at Chastity Gate Tube Station*?

Holding a bunch of daisies she just bought,

next to a friend who has the flashier peonies,

side by side they stand on the escalator.

Side by side too when they were school girls

some twenty years ago.

Their bicycles gently glided over the horizon 

as wildflowers spread around their wide skirts.

Nothing captured their heart like Italy then,

a web radiating out from the Mediterranean Sea,

but now, Lancôme is on the billboard,

a pair of red lips—oh, what curvature, how irresistible—

as if urging her to break away from old bondages.

Of course, the names Daisy, Aster, or Marguerite de Valois

evoke more than the names of the seasons.

At the tube station,

their newly awakened bodies

wait for the carriages to come to a stop.

Maybe this time the right door will open,

and "Open Seseme”—it will unlock a secret world for them.

Note: *Anzhenmen Tube Station

About the poet:

Mowo Er, born in Sichuan in the late 1970s, has published works including poetry collections When Tears Meet Seawater and In My Homeland, and a full-length novel The Female Bee. She has won awards such as the 5th Xu Zhimo Poetry Award, the 4th Beijing Literature and Art Network International Poetry Award, and one of the Top 10 Poets of 2017 of Modern Youth.