Liu Xia’s Poetry: Translation by Yu Zhang, Edited by Bonny Cassidy
Liu Xia's poems in the original Chinese
One Bird After Another
We saw it
A little reflection left on the glass
It had been printed there for a long time without leaving…
Every year on July 15 of the lunar calendar
The river would be covered with water lanterns
But they could not call back your soul…
The train heading for the concentration camp
Sobbingly ran over my body
But I could not hold your hand…
Untitled, To Xiaobo
You speak you speak you speak the truth
You are talking day and night as long as you are awake
You talk and talk
You are in a closed room while your voice breaks out to spread
The death from twenty years ago has come back again
Come and gone as the time
You are short of many things but with you are the souls of the dead
You have lost daily life to join the outcry of the dead
There is no response and none
You speak you speak you speak the truth
You are talking day and night as long as you are awake
You talk and talk
You are in a closed room while your voice breaks out to spread
The wound from twenty years ago has been bleeding
Fresh and red as the life
You are fond of many things but more passionate accompanying the souls of the dead
You have made a promise to seek the truth with them
On the way there is no light and none
You speak you speak you speak the truth
You are talking day and night as long as you are awake
You talk and talk
You are in a closed room while your voice breaks out to spread
The gunfire of twenty years ago has decided your life
Always living in death
You are in love with your wife but more proud of the dark time with her you spent
You let her be but are more insistent that she continues to write you poems after her death
In the verses there is no sound and none
2009.9.4
Wind
– To Xiaobo
You are destined in fate to be like the wind
Waving and flying
And playing games in the cloud
I ever imagined to be with you
But what home should there be
To accommodate you
As the walls will make you choke
You can only be a wind, but the wind
Has never told me
When to come and when to go
As the wind comes I cannot open my eyes
After the wind is gone there are dusts everywhere
December 1992
Lonely Vigil
– To Xiaobo
The days repeat gloominess and melancholy
Monotonous landscape
Always lacks a little of clearness
A bowl has dropped on the ground
The fragmented voice
Is sharply stabbing
Into the time of separation
A cat has softly
Swept over the grass at night
Its glowing green eyes
Are soaked with lonely juice
Do not capture
Those flashing fireflies
They are the ghosts of the night
Dancing beyond our life
I am a bitter fruit
In darkness
Sleeping in a dreamless page
Of this thick book
Not a permanent companion
On your journey
Remember the sunlight
Of that we have been deprived
August 1995
LIU Xia, the wife of Liu Xiaobo, is an artist and poet.