Five Poems by Zhu Xiao Di

 

Mostly Alone

 

Don’t get me wrong

I like being alone

A lot

 

Yet when I drink

I wish to talk

If only to myself

 

As I eat

What I cook

I wish somebody could taste it

 

I rarely sing

Only when nobody is listening

To what might come out

 

Monologue

 

I’m old and not old,

not old, yet old.

Strange at first,

yet it’s the only thing

I’m certain of.

Everything else slips.

 

Different from before,

this new feeling.

As a child, you never doubted

being a child.

Even denial proves it.

When you longed to grow,

you either were or wanted to be,

without question.

 

Only at my age

(I won’t say which)

you feel this split,

a double self, half-known.

Deny one, the other turns true.

I won’t give examples.

If you can’t imagine them,

you’re not here yet.

 

I don’t blame you.

It’s the only promise I can keep,

standing where I strangely stand.

 

 

Rose in My Backyard

 

In my backyard

Stands a rose planted by someone else

I inherited it when I bought the house

Yet I rarely see it behind the garage

 

No matter if I think of it or not

It grows at its own pace

As I occasionally visit it

Would it be appreciated at all

 

Magic of the Mirror

 

You were angry and looked in the mirror

Found yourself sullen and scowling

You didn’t like what you saw

So you smiled to make yourself look better

 

You were worried and felt blue

You peeped in the mirror and found

A long face, then you straightened your shoulders

And held up your fists, ready to fight

 

You were tired and felt fatigued

With a glance in the mirror

You found a youth behind an old face

Briskly reborn, fifty years younger

 

You were overjoyed and felt like a king

One quick glimpse in the mirror

Refreshing your mind and memories

A humble, clean soul came back

 

 

The Sun

 

The sun that shines

Is the one

I love

 

The shining sun

Is what I

Want to keep

 

What other use

Is the sun

If it keeps running away

 

Anyway

Who am I—

Not a god, after all

 

Zhu Xiao Di is the author of Thirty Years in a Red House: A Memoir of Childhood and Youth in Communist China (University of Massachusetts Press, 1998, 1999; Penguin, 2000), Tales of Judge Dee (novel), Leisure Thoughts on Idle Books (essays in Chinese), and over 120 poems published in journals across the U.S., U.K., Singapore, and Canada. His work also appears in the anthology Father: Famous Writers Celebrate the Bond Between Father and Child. A poet of memory, migration, and endurance, he lives in Boston, Massachusetts.