On Listening to Hai Zi

from The Last Tribe on Earth by Anthony Tao, Liane Halton

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lyrics

On Listening to Hai Zi
After Hai Zi’s “September,” as sung by Zhou Yunpeng
Hai Zi is a Chinese poet who killed himself in 1989

Gods died on these grasslands. The flowers
covering their bodies rightly flourish
and prosperously rot, returning life
to its proper place. It is not so far afield
after all, not so impossible as those melodies
sung on horse-haired instruments
in the lonely plains where we cannot go.
Hai Zi was still young when he laid his body
across railroad tracks and waited
to feel the concussion between words;
those of his generation would learn good sense
sometimes has the sense to leave all abandoned.
This was before they fled the bullets.
The blind singer Zhou Yunpeng understands
the cataclysm in that song
on horse-haired instruments in the lonely plains
where we cannot go. He says there are no tears…
well, call me a fool – if these aren’t tears
then I’ll return the sorghum liquor to its bottle
and the bottle to the mud, and the grass in the air
that pricks my nose and burns my tongue
I’ll return to the field of the dead gods
who are so far away that far cannot comprehend,
where wildflowers, facing the sea, sway in the wind.

credits

from The Last Tribe on Earth, released March 20, 2019

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about

Anthony Tao, Liane Halton Beijing, China

LIANE HALTON graduated from Rhodes University in South Africa in classical guitar performance and composition. ANTHONY TAO is an editor and writer whose poetry has appeared in publications such as Prairie Schooner, Borderlands, The Cortland Review, Kartika Review, Frontier, Asian Cha, etc. ... more