exile 181runs aground on a sandy beach
the sun hit by the ship’s mast
is a prisoner of my heart, while I’ve
been banished by the world it shines on
and on the reef, black pagan altar
there is nothing left to worship
but myself, about to open or close
the deafening bookThis poem contains a declarative exile marker in the banishment (ᬒ
䗤) of I. As an observation of textual fact, this is unchanged by its date
of composition, before Bei Dao’s physical exile and, indeed, his ban-
ishment. The declaration of banishment is, however, an integral part
of the body of the poem, and as such less overbearing than the con-
cluding statements in «Local Accent» and «He opens his third eye....»,
whose position at the very end of the text can lead to closure of the
interpretive process. Again, this is not to deny those two poems their
power but to note the decisive impact of their concluding lines on the
reading process.
Some unconstrained specimens of early Obscure Poetry generate
a feeling of loose ends or unfinished ideas rather than productive am-
biguity—but in the quick sequence of images in «Spite», the imagery
coheres: storm, beach, sea, sun, reef. The alienation of the speaker is
anchored, to stick with the poem’s vocabulary, in (written) language,
embodied in the deafening book—just like Chinese spoken to the mir-
ror, the word’s exile, the mother tongue’s sun, and the language of the
world and silence (≝咬, meaning silence as opposed to speech) in the
poems cited earlier.
These are the opening lines of «Notes Taken in the Rain» (䲼Ё㑾
џ), a longer poem that may serve as another example of alienation in
Bei Dao’s early work:^80
When I awake, the window on the street
retains of glass
that perfect, peaceful pain
while slowly clearing in the rain
the morning reads my wrinkles(^80) Bei Dao 1987: 134. A full translation by McDougall is found in Bei Dao 1988:
99.