A poem for your Friday

“Answer” by Bei Dao, translated by Donald Finkel

The scoundrel carries his baseness around like an ID card.
The honest man bears his honor like an epitaph.
Look—the gilded sky is swimming 
with undulant reflections of the dead. 

The say the ice age ended years ago.
Why are there icicles everywhere?
The Cape of Good Hope has already been found. 
Why should all those sails contend on the Dead Sea?

I came into this world with nothing 
but paper, rope, and shadow. 
Now I come to be judged, 
and I’ve nothing to say but this: 

Listen: I don’t believe!
OK. You’ve trampled 
A thousand enemies underfoot. Call me 
A thousand and one. 

I don’t believe the sky is blue. 
I don’t believe what the thunder says. 
I don’t believe that dreams aren’t real, 
that beyond death there is no reprisal. 

If the sea should break through the sea-wall,
let its brackish water fill my heart. 
If the land should rise from the sea again, 
we’ll choose again to live on the heights. 

The earth revolves. A glittering constellation 
pricks the vast defenseless sky. 
Can you see it there? That ancient ideogram—
the eye of the future, gazing back. 

Note: this poem was one of the poems and songs memorized and sung by the students in the Tiananmen Square Massacre.