Translated by Steven Bradbury
One day as I awoke I asked myself
Is this the future
We made
So much of long ago
In that future we feared would arrive in the here
And now of way back
Then
You imagined would be called
The now of here and now
But I imagined
A future past
We encountered each other where reflections of two lights crisscrossed
Fortunate for us we did
Or else our particular falls toward those fallings
Those divergences those slow slicings and delaying actions
Would not have had these isobathic forgettings
But really I’m no harbor for
I haven’t got a shore only
Those encounters are ships and I am more than
A seagull on a mast
Only the sea at its bluest is your gaze
And that blue
Is thus the clearest fabrication
Assuming your
Assumption is correct
Certain sailings
May be only furtive movements of the harbors they set out from
But then why are those kisses anchors
Lips are waves
Lips those thick billowing waves
HSIA YÜ is the author and designer of six volumes of groundbreaking verse, most recently Poems, Sixty of Them (2011). “Follow the herd and all occasion for regret will disappear” and “That was Then and This is Now but We’re finally in Synch” are from her fourth collection, Salsa, her most popular volume to date. She lives in Taiwan, where she co-edits the avant-garde journal and poetry initiative Xianzai Shi, otherwise known as Poetry Now. A full translation of Salsa, translated by Steve Bradbury, has just been released from Zephyr Press.
