objectification and the long-short line 271umbrellas, the poem can be seen to wax philosophical. Perhaps the
conversation that takes place between the rain and the earth, with the
powerful image of sounds that fall into the mud, is more meaningful
than that between the human protagonists—but there is no way of
knowing for sure.
We get a closer look at the rain in «Outside the Poet’s Scope: Ob-
servation of the Life of a Raindrop» (䆫Ҏⱘ㣗ೈҹᇍϔϾ䲼⚍
ϔ⫳ⱘ㾖ᆳ, 1998). «Outside» is yet another long poem. Here are the
first 38 of its 71 lines:^25
right it’s going to rain
the poet on a bar stool in the coffee shop
shoots a glance at the sky quietly mumbles
and his tongue withdraws into the dark
but back in those dark clouds its life its
drop-by-drop tiny story is only just beginning
how to say this this sort of small thing happens every moment
i’m concerned with bigger things says the poet to his female reader
obedient to that invisible straight line coming down
maintaining consistency with surroundings equally perpendicular to the earth
just like the poet’s daughter always maintains consistency with kindergarten
and then in skies twisted by pedagogy
becoming twisted it cannot but become twisted
not in order to graduate but in order to retain its wetness
it has not yet the ability to choose its locus
it does not know as of yet that whatever its choice
to fall down is all that is within its rights or maybe it knows
but then again how to stop here
everything is going down
happy little princelet in self-styled coronation
on the verge of an overcast sky lithely flashes by
divorces itself from the ranks turns into a tiny tail
stuck upward flattened out twisting up again
lashing out experiencing the freedom
and the unreliability of open space
now it seems that it can do as it pleases
in a small space in the world neither up nor down(^25) Yu Jian 2004a: 327-329.