82 chapter two
that can both be seen
and used for cover
a bird’s
two sides
with my left eye
separate from my right
see you
and see him
only neither of you
can see each otherLook implies stronger agency than see, although this is less clear in Chi-
nese than in English. I have translated ⳟ ‘look’ as see in order to retain
the connection with the resultative ⳟ㾕 ‘see’ (literally ‘look-and-see’),
which is the more important expression in this poem.
More insistently than «There Is a Darkness», «See» shows the im-
possibility of human contact. The obstruction that stands between I
and you takes various shapes. Of these, the wall and the tree appear
frequently in Han Dong’s poetry, for instance in «Someone at the Foot
of the Wall» (ຕϟⱘҎ, 1988) and «Small Street Scene» (㸫༈ᇣ
᱃, 1999),^24 both poems that highlight the limitations of mutual per-
ception and understanding. Interestingly, in «See», after taking posi-
tion beside the wall and above the tree, the speaker changes from a
voice-over-like observer into the agent of obstruction, acting as voice-
over and protagonist at the same time. The first stanza’s final line is
almost triumphant: I am the mist itself (៥ህᰃѥ䳒ᴀ䑿).^25 In the third
stanza, the speaker-obstructor takes the shape of a bird, whose left and
right eye operate independently. A hint of mockery can be detected
in the poem’s closing lines: [I] see you / and [I] see him / only neither of
you / can see each other, although this isn’t the only possible reading. In
another, unlikely but theoretically possible, the final four lines could
be a neutral observation, or even suggest regret. Regardless, «See»
concurs with other poems by Han Dong in its disavowal of company,
contact and communication, including communication through po-
etry. This brings to mind a vision of the poem as a type of language
(^24) Han 2002: 67, 260.
(^25) Remarkably, ⚳䳒 ‘smoke, mist’ in line 7 is followed by ѥ䳒 ‘clouds, mist’ in
lines 10 and 18.