SPEAKING OF COCONUT TREES by Sun Wenbo

SPEAKING OF COCONUT TREES

Sun Wenbo

…Coconuts, they don’t fall and smash people’s skulls.

But with the wind they will roll as fast as a football.

The sea is the home they return to.

Floating in the ocean, they still behave like a football;

the waves kick them, as if the ocean has sent out

who-knows-what ghosts to defend its amazing gates.

—One may ask, Isn’t this some fantasy?

Of course it is—but not without the facts.

It comes from folk tales.

My reliable source says that no one was ever smashed by a coconut.

I am not even slightly worried when walking in a coconut grove and

watching the coconuts suspended from the treetops.

On the contrary, it’s marvelous the way they rise up entangled

in unique shapes—truly too unique —even unique for trees

in their appearances; a ring above a ring around the tree trunk shows its age.

Generally they are perfectly straight like natural flag poles. I like to

watch them sway left and right in a hurricane —like ballerinas—Pink Girl Trees.

Yang Xiaobin has a knack for giving these kinds of names. Corresponding to the giant tree we call Fir,

which we consider a masculine name—it’s settled then—don’t you agree

that it makes your heart tingle with tenderness—

though the sentiment is possibly an indulgence.

So be it, let us indulge. This is like after we drinkcoconut juice,

we still want to eat its thick sweet meat. That’s one way to put it, how endearing this is—

especially as the sun is setting west,

and you are sitting under the palm trees in a reclining chair,

facing the ocean—no blossoms around,

but my heart is still filled with the sweet fragrance of my courtyard.

Notes:

*Yang Xiaobin, poet, author, Professor Yang Xiaobin , born Shanghai,1963, teaches Chinese linguistics in the United States.

About the poet:

Sun Wenbo was born in 1956 in Chengdu, Sichuan Province. He began publishing poems in 1986. Together with Xiao Kaiyu and Zhang Shuguang, he founded the poetry journal The 1990s, and with Lin Mu, he established Little Magazine. His published poetry collections include Travels on the Map. He co-edited Chinese Poetry Criticism (three volumes) and Chinese Poetry: A Memoir of the 1990s. In 1996, he received the inaugural Liu Li'an Poetry Award.