DAI Wei: Something Has Gone Missing

　Something Has Gone Missing
　　　　　　　　DAI Wei
On the old site of a post office
Appears a brand new square
From letter papers, handwritten marks are erased
From telephones, human voices are erased
As if from the arms
An embrace is unnoticeably extracted
With only the air left to sustain its original form
I am made to admit
That something has gone missing
And what I need to lock up is but
The habit of standing on my tiptoes
When I forget bringing with me the keys
And stretching out to fumble
On the doorframe for the perhaps nonexistent one

DAI Wei was born in 1970s in Chengdu and grew up in Chongqing, and now lives in Nanjing. She had been trained as a ballerina and had worked on a ship. She started poetry-writing in 1987 and published two books of poetry. In an interview, she expresses her idea of poetry. “The process of writing poems is a continuous letting go of what you hold, making it lighter and lighter…until a feathery lightness is achieved. Isn’t it too loaded to ask poetry to bear anything?” This can be read as characteristic of her poetry.



　某种东西已经不在了
　　　　　　代薇
在邮电所的旧址上
出现了一个新修的广场
从信纸上移走字迹
从电话里移走嗓音
就像一个拥抱
被轻轻从手臂里抽掉
只有空气还在坚持它的形状
我承认某种东西
已经不在了
而我要克制的
仅仅是忘记带钥匙的时候
依然习惯踮起足尖
伸手去摸门框上
莫须有的那一把