Fan Jinghua: The Seventh Day

　　　The Seventh Day

The moon is almost round. At dawn.
Walking under the ruins of clouds, I hold two legs tight
As if there were a dirty hairy tail betraying my nonhumanness.
My now escapes into the distant, wordless, soundless,
Away from everything, cold and vast.

At the height of three storey, shades of humans bloom like hallucination,
Invisible hands sticking out of no-longer-there windows.
No clothes racks, no squatting potted plants,
No underwear or socks hanging on the rotary clothes airers.
No shadows behind the curtains where TV banally flickers.

Absence is more openly insidious than the past,
A fester that develops into a herpes zoster between the spectacular
Sandwich of rivers and mountains.
An arched bridge collapses before I come;
A promise turns into the cruelest precipice.

Everywhere my eyes touch, thorns grimace in anger.
Behind my back, the bouquet of carnation faints in my hand,
And I cannot present it to the smiling summer day as a surprise.
When I walk over to you, I walk to the dead end,
Flowers withered, an unwanted gift to the nameless mound.
　　　　　　　　　　　　　May 22, 2008

　　　第七日

月亮几乎圆了。在黎明。
走在云的废墟下，我夹紧双腿，保持向下的重量，
我的现在遁迹到了遥远之中，无声、无字，
离一切都冷漠而空旷。

在楼的高度，魂的影子开着此起彼伏的幻花，
看不见的手伸出不再有的窗户。
没有竹竿、没有蹲坐的盆景，
阳台上也没有内衣和袜子在圆衣架上旋转。

缺失比曾经还要公然而阴毒，
这伤害在山河的夹层中泛起一条带状的疱疹。
一座拱桥毁了，在我到来之前。
约定成为最残暴的绝壁，目光抚摸处，棘荆丛生。

而我藏在身后的花束，暗香依然，
却再不能成为迎接灿烂的惊喜。
当我走过去，就是走向绝路，
花儿将已经凋萎，只能在节后献给无名的墓碑。
　　　　　　　　　　　2008年5月22日

Note: The seventh day after a death marks the most important date for the memorial, and usually the service is also the most serious. For the Christians, the seventh day is a day of worship.
Chinese government for the first time observes a three-day national mourning for its citizens; before this, the national mourning has only been ordained for the highest-rank leaders.