New Perspectives on Contemporary Chinese Poetry

A mountain range is dragged
away by the darkness like a
corpse
Nearby the heartbeat of a shrub
is just barely audible
Those huge birds look down
on me from the sky
With human eyes
With an air of private savagery
Winter raises and lowers its
cruelly masculine consciousness

I’ve remained unusually calm
throughout
Like a blind woman, I see
night’s darkness in broad
daylight
Like a baby lacking guile,
my fingerprints
Have no more grief to offer
Footsteps! A sound now
growing old
Dreams seem to possess some
knowledge, and with my own eyes
I saw an hour that forgot to
open its blossoms
Bearing down on the dusk

Fresh moss in their mouths, the
meanings they sought
Folded their smiles back into their
breasts in tacit understanding
The night seems to shudder,
like a cough
Caught in the throat, I’ve already
quit this dead end hole.

The narrator displays confidence and self-possession mixed with a
sense of wounded enervation. Although physically damaged, she has
not yet given up hope. The title of the poem hints at things to come,
and, like a premonition, it introduces the rest of the cycle. The first line
introduces a female figure, the “woman in a black dress,” who comes
in the dead of night. Even without the preface, “Black Night
Consciousness,” this image demonstrates the identification of women
with night in Zhai’s poetic universe. While women may find their
power in the night and be at home there, finding in it a time to

116 Andrea Lingenfelter

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