Poems by Meng Lang

Meng lang, a full-time free-lance writer who lives in Shanghai. His poetry
collection, THE SURVIVOR OF THIS CENTURY, piblished in 1988. 



● BEING MISSING

No news of the weatherman
Can be heard from braodcasting.

The storm raised by him
Continues to hide. A black umbrella
Can not open
In the air.

It is such a muggy weather
That the weatherman is unwiiling to go out.

His wife turns off
The radio conveniently.

It is his wife who is missing.



● LOSING

People are losing from each other
Therefore a hand shakes another so frequently.

The decline of smiles
Sweeps across too many faces
And mine, lurking among them,
Experiences a strom, too.

It is independent from them
Which with their own ulterior centers.

People are losing from each other
Therefore their hands droop far from each other.

There is nothing
That so easily exploits human flesh
Than smiles.

I cover my face with my hands
A leaf lost in a storm!



● THERE IS SOMETHING DRAWING ME

I am drawing my hands back to my sides
With something more powerful.

I am drawing my body back to my room
With something more powerful than me.

I am drawing my room away
And sink into a deep sleep in the room.

There is something drwaing me
I am drwaing my room back to my land.

My land is drawing towards its depth
There is something drawing my land.

Like a god, I suspend in the air
Putting forth much of my strength than ever.



● AFTER BEING TOOTHLESS

Some orderly teeth, piling up
In front of you
Unlike the rows of stone tablets
In the earth

They do not represent words

Some orderly teeth, 
Exercising patience, 
Accumulating, 
Spreading

But I, toothless, still
Spurn those words as usual

In a furiuos fire
Burning again, you keep a distance
From the fire, carrying water

With teeth tightly bitten
The stone tablets, staying at where moonlight gently meets



● AT THE STERN OF A SHIP

At the stern of a ship
Water begins to narrate
The story you heard is quite touching
And makes you sob again.

In a shipwreck
I see sailors sinking in the ship
Their captain taking holidays ashore
Hands his white handkerchiefs
To his wife and me.

Wiping off tears
On the clean deck
Blooming me
On the clean billows
Blooming the ship.

Under the ship deck
There are those who secretly died.

At the stern of a ship
I become the first narrator.



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