Writing a Poem Is All I Can Do for You
By Wu Sheng
Here is where river and sea
Meet in loving-kindness
Fiddler crabs, New Guinea mudskippers, far-eastern curlews,
corn crakes
The wetlands stage where dazzling performances unfold
Home where the egret plucks out its food
The white dolphin's near-shore corridor
On this land, generations of farmers and fishermen
Have wiped away their sweat and enjoyed the cool breeze
Greeting the tides! Ebbing and flowing
History forms on the mudflats
Transient and mesmerizing ripples
The openness permits us a far-off gaze
Enough for us to set our hearts free
To feel the insignificance of life
And the insignificance of interests
Will future generations on this island have
The chance to experience?
A petrochemical plant known as Kuokuang
Is pressuring the anxious and aggrieved west coast
The last remaining mudflats and wetlands
A banner known as 'construction' flutters shamelessly
Against the seaport wind
With the pressure of imminent development, it looks like
The coastline will soon be closed, shutting off our view
The pristine view replaced with smokestacks, oil spills,
and dust filling the sky
For the benefit of a few
It looks like our water resources will be diverted
With drought as the result for us
It looks like you, the silent masses, will soon vanish
Not to mention the New Guinea mudskipper, fiddler crabs,
and corn crakes
Not to mention the egrets and white dolphins
And the farmers and fishermen.
All for the slogan of prosperity
How should we report
The environmental impact
Assessment?
And all I can do is write a poem
How I wish my verses
Could be smelted into bullets
Sited into insatiable brains
Or forged into blades
To pierce the expanding breasts of greed
But that's not possible. All I can do is bear it
Writing a sad and useless poem
Swallowing unrivaled worry and sadness
My verses are not bullets or blades
They frighten no one
Nor know to whom they should kowtow
They can only fill syllables and lines with tears
One recited after another
One after another, shouting to Heaven and Earth
2010
Copyright Credit: Wu Sheng, "Writing a Poem Is All I Can Do for You" from My Village: Selected Poems. Copyright © 2020 by Wu Sheng, translated by John Balcom. Reprinted by permission of Zephyr Press.
Source: My Village: Selected Poems (Zephyr Press, 2020)