MARRIAGE By Qi Yuan

MARRIAGE

By Qi Yuan

Crags everywhere, as if in a dream.

You hop between crags (or something like crags), into the light.

The light shows a cliff’s silhouette but not its depth.

With each jump, you rise from the valley,

and continue to jump, changing postures, here and there.

Although it can be very frightening, just like the night

when you lost your virginity, but no one dies from it.

In the real world, it doesn’t work that way—

you would be trembling with fear to jump down a floor.

Vertigo is very real to us small creatures. Some didn’t believe it and jumped off the bridge,

off a tree, or off a roof and died, I feel sorry for these deaths. So sad.

It is pointless to compare dreams to reality. In dream things do not have dimensions,

still it may be necessary to discuss what a foot is, or three feet, or six feet.

Relatively speaking, I prefer unattached objects. You have sorrows, so do I.

Sadness can suddenly appear, just like happiness

can suddenly enter a pure waking world. Early morning in November,

the most significant crags are those in my inner world;

they rise straight up, fragrant. Now, we sit together,

but don’t talk much. We are crag hoppers in the eyes of wild beasts.

About the poet:

Song Qiyuan was born in Huaiyuan, Anhui Province in 1985 and currently lives in Shenzhen. His main works include poem sequences such as Cubist Youth, Insomnia Poems, Bee Hummingbird and Flamingo.