From: Tuya@ccmail.uoregon.edu
Subject: The songs of the Fall (poems)
X-Vers: University of Oregon Version dmm-02 30-Oct-90
Posted-Date: Thu, 15 Oct 92 11:13 EST
Organization: Indiana University
Date: Thu, 15 Oct 1992 16:11:00 GMT

 Fall is a poetic season.  So please excuse my fa1 biao3 yu4.

                                              --- Tu Ya  10/8/92
               

        SHORT POEMS 
                    by Tu Ya     

           The Model
                             9/18/91

She is a crane, she wades the lake
Her hair's long, and dances, like flowers in a current

She turns, lightning that moment
She turns into a love poem, read by all eyes, aloud


            Fall Thoughts
                                  
The coldness flirts, maple woods stretch
Still drunk from last night, 
a line of footprints walks the white sand, endlessly

The setting Sun red, memory fresh
she prints herself onto the sky, on the edge

When Autumn thoughts wage,
       the wind whirls the world, 
             numerous leaves fall, ten thousand mountains flee

         
             Autumn Poem (1)
           
The night circles, to land but fails
A wild goose cries

And tears fly 
  and become autumn leaves

When winds come
say farewell, disperse 

When the moon rises
fade the color, become silence

         The Port

I roam, along climate, a bird
Like snow flakes I land
At night, I moor, by reed
Insects chirping the Milky Way, moonlight is my port

            Mirror Of A Face

Time glides, like shadows of birds, soundless
A mind grows old, like an aged pond, molded with moss
Have you tried to scoop, from the lake, for a few fishy days
but only grabbed some wrinkles
swimming in hands, like a mirror, of a face?

           The Death Of A Poet
  -- in memory of a young Chinese Poet HaiZi who commited suicide
in 1987.

The train screams through his figure
chaining a broken poem together

This end, or that end
it's one bridge, one thought

Passengers, sleep well on track
A bump of a dream spills a cup of water 


             Written on M.V.'s Album
                   6/17/91

I follow the smell of Arizona wild flowers
  to go through the album 
I walk the Grand Canyon by page
  and see thunderstorms casting an immortal life

And I see the Rocky Mountain
  floating in between sunsets and sunrises 
Indians wade across the Colorado River
  like a song, of a deep bronze color, slow 
                             but very distinctive

    
               I Come To Fitzgerald, Georgia

   I haven't met the rattle snake and the allegator
   I can't interpret stars hung on maple trees 

   But I am a believer, I come to the South
   to kiss the cotton fields that grow souls
   to listen to the river that plays old songs
   
   So I come, for a dream
     for that dream I come
   So I extend my hands
     to greet the dark clouds and angry storms 

                     LIKE THIS
                              -- for 6.4, 1991

Quietly, the fall of petals is like this
Death is being expressed like this
The world is a colorful tragedy this world
I read history -- 
like going through a graveyard in darkness

                    KEYS

       I string my life like this
       A small string suffices
       The desk, the appartment
       that one opens car doors

       I operate my world with a turn
       A simple turn suffices
       Lock up, or release
       Play an inmate or play police

   When The Moon Is Round

everything in sight becomes frost
Therefore my hometown must be cold

I think of the color of Mom's hair
and the falling ashes from father's cigarette
Slowly, they fall, as flakes, without a sound 

                 RIA

She takes out a dozen colorful butterflies from her bag
After opening wings
they all become little poems, fluttering
They were written in dreams, she explains, her voice soft

If wings are linked together 
there will be a bridge, rainbow-like, 
that goes from one side to the other

If the rain keeps falling like this
Somebody will walk into the verdant dream
steps knocking at a lonesome door


                    EYES
                               
The sky at night is an Ocean
Eyes are fish
Therefore the color of tears is dark-blue
and the world in irises mysteriously deep 
                            
                  BIRTHDAY

What are you going to do
         on your birthday?

Either jumping from a cliff into the Pacific  
  or --
walking into the Post Office
to buy a 29 cent stamp (The price went up again)
and send my taxes and regards to atomic bombs

     Oregon -- 
                                
a word I can't clearly pronounce  
Because I don't know how much of those 
snow-covered mountains has been dissolved in lakes
and how many moons have been brushed white by those Douglas Firs

And Alice, most of your dreams have landed here
to become mushrooms
Holding colorful umbrellas
they are having a party right now, in rain

But what can you do?
That's Oregon, every breath is soaked in green 
Therefore I draw an Oregon map on a chinese parasol leaf 
and ask a cloud to mail it to Ethiopia, for those dry seasons

                Montana

-- a boundless legend
and those ponderous buffalos, what are they pondering about?

The mountains are silent
and solemn, as the deep wrinkles on old grandpa's forehead

The grass changes color again
The cowboy's story is told, told, and told

        WRITTEN ON THE SKETCH OF A BOBCAT BY A. S.
                                           4/15/91

You used to be an unruly forest whistle
Only the wind could trace your shadow 

-- until you were captured

And now you are as quiet as your solitude 
trying to hide behind the dust

Except when you arch your back 
and stalk across the imagination, like a thought 


               That Flower

doesn't have yesterday
or tomorrow
and today is just an unreliable promise

Opening like a kiss  
  and falling like a sigh
it opens and falls 
  between existence and non-existence


             A SPRING NIGHT
                                  3/25/91

Over there is a stretch of grass
passing that is a stretch of grass
The street light walks down the road
Such is tonight's state of mind

The rain happens to record
    the outline of a person's back
and it patters patters patters
tries but fails to describe  


                  THE HOWL OF A WOLF

That wolf
submits itself to the moonlight
It walks walks walks 
   just walks, just like that
Sometimes near, sometimes far, near and far
Above the mountain hovers the moon
Blinking and remote dies a star

The wolf sits down and howls
   the kind of howl that echoes and is long, long, long
That kind of howl ...
It's only a howl a howl no one hears
Perhaps it doesn't say anything doesn't say anything anything 


                A TEAR WITHOUT A NAME
      
The wind is always so vague
   and pink
Quietly, it peels Spring into petals
like small, tender, and light kites
   drifting all over places
They parachute onto grass
   only to become dandelion seeds
            ready to take off again

The wind is always so vague
   and pink
There is no reason for wanting to cry
     like a turtle gazing into the ocean
       or a mourning buffalo with its head lowered down
Maybe it's wise to become a clam then
   swallowing the darkness underwater
       and become pregnant with a nameless 
                                          tear