Confession

      

By Changming Yuan

[the true worth of my life]   Ever since retirement, I’ve been trying to Examine & re-examine my life In hope of digging some worth As Socrates has advised us to   Alas, to my great embarrassment, I find I am neither smart nor handsome, desirous Of everything but good at nothing, thus Having done nothing special, made no Contributions to society, let alone history   Time and again, I cannot help wondering: How have I managed to survive in so many years Without being good at anything at all…?   Aha, after years of thinking I now know the reason lies In the way I am always good at Eating & & excreting In particular I was gifted with human rights! [notorious nostalgia]           Never was I able to carry with me The bold frog calls, the raw smell of The rice field, the tender touch of The moonlight, or the fresh taste of Pepper in my home town, but I have Well remembered how to Make the Jinzhou rice ball & speak the Songzi dialect Since I was a little village boy   One day I will forget them all, but I will nevertheless be able to Tell the taste, even with my eyes closed & understand the vulgar speech    Even without a hearing aid    [getting ready to confess] With a storm With a gull With your breath Goes the thought  With a vague vision Beyond the bogland With your heart Hawking aloud in the wild With dripping blood An unformed concept A shoal of consciousness  Bubbling with feeling With a photon  With a quantum With your mind concentrated On a twisted other   [deep feel: my innermost confession]   I love my native country                                             Vehemently                                                                               As I detest its culture   I love my father                                             Much                                                                             As I dislike his personality   I love my son                                             Greatly                                                                             As I deplore his lifestyle   I love my selfhood                                             Dearly as the whole human race                                                                             As I despise its animalness    [prayer after confession]     Jesus my dear Lord!                                                              Were I Really to have an afterlife I hope to become a wolf, or                        A fir, for instance   Just to be a bit more, or even less                         Than a human being   [home of all my selves]   I have a whole pack of selves, constantly On the run, bolting ahead, or lagging behind While sticking their noses in gifts left behind By other quasi dogs. Sometimes, one bursts Ahead of me. Another sprinting far off into Invisibility, and a third jumping around me Like the shadow of a daruma doll. However None of them really outpaces my living Consciousness or my protoselfhood. Leashed As each of them is, they reach to my final Destination almost exactly at the same time When my mind stops functioning, but on The way often do I wonder: I am their master Or just one of them to catch up with another?     [all roads lead to your innerself]   Unlike Narcissus getting himself drowned While lost in his own beauty reflected in the water You will live happily ever after, once   You put aside your clothes, masks, shadows And your reflections, shake off your pretentiousness Forget your other half, your children, your car   Your house, but just stop to stay still, accept the flowers Your inner being collects for you on the Valentine’s Day, and falls in love with your most authentic selfhood     Bio: Yuan Changming grew up in an isolated village, began to learn the English alphabet at age 19, and published monographs on translation before leaving China. With a Canadian PhD in English, Yuan currently edits Poetry Pacific with Allen Yuan at poetrypacific.blogspot.ca. Credits include 12 Pushcart nominations & 15 collections (most recently SINOSAUR) . Besides appearances in Best of the Best Canadian Poetry (2008-17), BestNewPoemsOnline & Poetry Daily, among nearly 1,989 others, across 49 countries, Yuan was nominated, and served on the jury, for Canada’s National Magazine Award (poetry category). Early in 2022, Yuan began to write and publish fiction.