You Have Never Had Enough of Love You have never had enough of love Such as for your Mother & Motherland For Qi Hong, for Yiming For Liao Hengxiang, as well As for the pepper, acorn tofu & carpcakes From your native village in Jinzhou For music, light or classic, for songs Sung by humans and birds alike For poetry by Su dongpo, by Guo Xiaochuan By John Keats, by Lorna Crozier For the hills at Zhangjiajie, the water In Lake Louise, the trees & flowers anywhere For whatever is truth or beauty, just as you have fallen Passionately in love (again) with someone After 42 years of separation, in Deed, you never run short of love For a human being as for nature Be she a standing for herself Or for the whole human race Frog, Yangsheng and Weixin/WeChat I was video-chatting with my mom On my iPad when I heard a loud call From a handsome frog. Not to disturb My night owl son still busy dreaming Against noon light, I locked myself out In the balcony. Remember to eat an egg A banana, an apple, some black fungus every day Small fish better than meat. Shrimps help more Like those a frog could catch on a summer night But my mother neither saw nor heard any frog Which I imagined jumping around in a rice paddy On the other side of the world. It was the song Of nostalgia squatting high at the threshold of My throat, ready to call like an unseen frog Never Too Old: For Liu Yu Hi, Mom, how are you doing this couple of days? Last night, I told my younger son how you used to be The best student in your village school, how you won A scholarship to attend junior high school, but failed To go because you did not have the one dollar enough To eat for a whole month. He really felt sorry for you And fortunate for himself. Yes, because of your very Dreams about school, you have a son with a PhD In Canada, a grandson with a PhD from NYU… Remember? It is you who taught your ageing son To use an iPad to buy and sell high-tech stocks The other day, and I found it really amazing, not about My own reluctance to learn anything new, but about Your readiness to experiment with your mind and Fingers, both of which are now almost 80 years old Frog Calls The frog has stopped calling In the early light, but I Still feel the sound waves Surging towards my mind’s shore Though different from the frogs My mother used to listen to when I must have heard deep Inside her teenager womb As she walked at dusk from her first job In town back to her native village Their calls separate us into two worlds And my nostalgia is her nostalgia Echoing from generation to another As loud as the song of the heart From the long lost rice fields Farewell Talk: For Liu Yu and Yuan Hongqi Well… Old Liu, I have said all That I have …to say, just as I’ve done All that I can …do Sure, Old Man, so you can die A happy death now, and I will Follow to accompany you shortly What a comfort! We have two …filial sons To …outlive us, and three great grandsons To carry our …bloodline on Indeed, they bring true honor to the family Name: one is a pioneering engineer In Silicon Valley, another is doing his PhD In New York, and the youngest has published A poetry book in Vancouver though still a teenager But both of us …grew up in poor Chinese villages You …barely finished your elementary school While I had only two …years of education Really, this contrast alone makes us all happy And proud enough, just as our elder son called To stress this from Canada yesterday evening Well, fare…well, I am going first; once… I find the Way to the Pureland, I will …return to take you… But don’t be in such a hurry yet, Old Man For I wish to take care of our two ageing sons For a few more years. Hey, nihao Nurse Tribute to Yuan Hongqi and Liu Yu In this entire world, I am now The only one who truly knows You are still alive. You see As part of you, I have grown Talented enough to represent your Most memorable pasts without Having to carving them on a High-standing marble tombstone Also, I have become rich enough To keep all your genetic records In the safest safe within my plain Mind instead of a fancy cyberstation More important, I have turned strong Enough to uphold your spirit firmly In my body and carry it forward Until it blooms among my off-spring Yes, in this little poem, I, for one, know You are still as much alive as these words Spring Festival Message: for Liu Yu Rather than composing poetry To commemorate you after you are gone I am now writing, dear Mom To pay my highest tribute to you As one of the hardest-fated on earth Yes, among the many death experiences you’ve had The most significant one for me (and my sons) Was your sickness you suffered at two, which was so Severe that your poor and ignorant foster mother Could do nothing but put you on a flat basket And return your living corpse to your bio-creator But for your step father, who used his shamanic skills To contain the evil spirit and drive it to an unknown Corner, you would have died like a doomed sapling (That’s why your name is changed to ‘Refound’) So, stay well, Mom, and remain hardy for us! Changming Yuan grew up in an isolated village, started to learn the English alphabet in Shanghai at age nineteen, and published monographs on translation before leaving China. With a Canadian PhD in English, Yuan currently edits Poetry Pacific with Allen Yuan in Vancouver. Credits include eleven Pushcart nominations, eleven chapbooks (most recently LIMERENCE) as well as appearances in the Best of Best Canadian Poetry & BestNewPoemsOnline, among 1879 other literary outlets across 46 countries. In March 2021, Yuan served on the jury for Canada's 44th National Magazine Awards (poetry category). |
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