New Perspectives on Contemporary Chinese Poetry

for one can also find playful and even joyous poems that are set in the
cold and dank confines of a water well in the winter. Wells in Chinese
discourse recur with great consistency and are associated with society,
as a community cannot exist without water. Water, traditionally,
comes from a well. In addition to the natural connection to suste-
nance, however, the well also conjures images of social oppression.
It often has been the chosen venue for exploited young women to
commit suicide, thus ending their own lives and literally poisoning the
well in the process. As we shall see after reading this next poem, the
well has another connotation in Chinese philosophy, one that is toyed
with in this jocund verse:

38 Christopher Lupke

Skylight

Each night, the stars all
come to my roof tiles to tap water
I’m flat on my back in the bottom
of a well, a very deep well.

Ever since I’ve had a skylight
It’s like I scraped off the frozen
snow cover myself

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          • I’m the unstoppable
            spring in the north
          
          
          
          
        
        
        
        
      
      
      
      
    
    
    
    
  
  
  
  

The stars are all lovely, taking
turns occupying the seven nights,
And as for that southern, that
blue, that tiny star?
Harking from the spring brook,
the water’s lapping the walls
That clanging earthen
urn hasn’t been lowered yet.
Ah, the stars are all lovely
And echoing in my dreams,
is just one name
That name, is carefree
as the flowing water...

天F

”•, –—們™*我的dš]›œ

我在1žŸ着, | 的¡

¢£有c天F

¤¥¦§D%覆©的ª«

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          • 我E北地®) ̄的春天
          
          
          
          
        
        
        
        
      
      
      
      
    
    
    
    
  
  
  
  

–—們™MN, 分±c²³著的μQ•,

~南¶的·色的3–呢？

»¢春¼的œ`在½¾間蕩着

ÁÁ有聲的陶Ä還Æ垂b*。

¡, –—們™MN

~在夢ÈÉA著的, 祇有sQËÌ

ËÌ, ¢在Í如Μ。。。

(Zheng [1957] 2003: 120–121)

The operating cultural allusion in this poem is to the Daoist
philosopher Zhuangzi’s metaphor of the “frog in a well” 1ÏÐ
involving a frog who, because he lives in a well, can only see a cylin-
der of the sky. He then takes this cylinder to be the whole sky, thus
illustrating the narrow-mindedness of one who assumes that his indi-
vidual frame of reference is universal. But in this modern use of frog in