The Birds are Dead Now
I like reading books of poems
on my travels
and in places where people pile up
once
on a bus
I had an unhappy poetry reading experience
because poetry
is written in lines
the people round me thought
I had got my hands on some
weird gobbledegook
to turn their looks of astonishment
back to a dullness so like that of reality
I had no choice but to close the book
and any poems that had spread their wings
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by Fang Xianhai
translation: Simon Patton and Guan Zhen, 2009