The Ends of the Road

Every stop on the road is someone's destination.
Other paths lie before us, other travelers come behind.

If the road ended tomorrow we would walk into the desert
Seeking a new horizon, distance our only guide.

Letting the wind erase our footprints so no one would follow
So anyone who came after would think we'd arrived.

- Hu Ming-Xiang

The limit to martyrdom

...is the cruelty of the human imagination.

There is a saint for every torture the pious mind can conceive.

Vague Memories

Flames chuckle over
The memory of lost forests
Old men around a fire
Speaking of love.

- Hu Ming-Xiang

A Gentle Luxury

The shapes I saw in the clouds once
Vanish in a puff of breeze
White petals afloat on the water
Proving my loss too light.

- Hu Ming-Xiang

The Lantern

Beauty does not demand attention
The wise have little need for speech.
Light shines from the glowing lantern
The paper does not catch on fire.

- Hu Ming-Xiang

Devotion

Just got back from a theater / dance performance by Sarah Michelson / Richard Maxwell which asks the important moral question: what if God is a sadistic personal trainer and life just an endless series of high energy aerobics (to overly loud music) whose only purpose is to see how long it takes you to collapse of exhaustion?

The shame of it is that Maxwell's text for the performance is really quite beautiful - witty, moving and profound - which only serves to highlight how wooden and uninspired the choreography that goes with it really is.

Possibly Untrue

It is impossible to believe in impossibility.

What we call impossible is only what we believe to be always untrue. Just as when we speak of infinity we mean a number too big to count.

The Watermelon

All through the Spring it grew
Secretly, staying close to the ground.
Today you carved it open
Ate the red flesh, spat out the seeds.

- Hu Ming-Xiang

After the Fire

The butterflies have vanished mistaking
The falling ash for snow
In the burnt ruins of our garden
Embers glow like roses.

- Hu Ming-Xiang

Ripple

The wind turns away with a sigh
Knowing its words weigh little
The leaf tongues the water
A thousand kisses ripple out.

- Hu Ming-Xiang

The guilty flowers

How proud the flowers awaiting execution
Prisoners unashamed of their crimes
Who among us will hold his head so high
When the winter is finally done?

- Hu Ming-Xiang

Ghost

When you came from the river your hair was still wet
And I watched it dry in the summer breeze
Watched as each strand came slowly undone
Unable to keep the shape to which it clung.

- Hu Ming-Xiang