Yusa Zhuang
Thoughts In An Easier Time
Isn’t torture
at heart a refusal
to get used to
a compromised life?
The acceptance is not
the pardon:
the flesh is weak; the tormentors
hold the proof
by the joints of its limbs
and a hammer –
The mind is weak; the flesh
poisons with its blood
in easier times.
The spirit flees the body
with a scream
that isn’t heard.
The spirit enters the body
without pity
when it is broken enough.
You are dead to me, the beloved says
at the final parting,
for in my heart you live –
When my aunt chewed bark in China
to kill the hunger
of exile, who did she turn to
and did the memory
sustain her enough
to let it go?
A Suicide
Meanwhile:
Coffee is brewing.
The neighbour’s car engine.
Jason’s cat
steals back from the hunt, tripping past the shoes.
Somewhere a door. Somewhere else
another door –
The clean-swept pavements outside
once again
astonished by leaves, some still falling.
Off Day
A world without heroes, says the action hero
on TV, is a world without suffering.
Yes, it is tiring, I say to a friend
who bothered, but it brings in the money.
The past is a mirror
shattered: in pieces, like the heart.
We remain mysteries to each other,
even so.
In love, the heart
ticks
like a bomb –
And mother,
placing the autobiography back onto the shelf, says –
no one served time longer than he did,
for political reasons – as if refusing to say more.