Turning his palms up... Look!
Scales but no fins
What kind of fish are they?
Later, squatting under the eaves
He eats a fruit called the moon
Spitting the crushed seeds into
the sky; they become stars
On the ice-cold tip of his tongue
Is the pure scent of burnt snow
Later he kicks a stone, waltzes
Along the wall, around the mouth
of a dried-up well
And looking down
He no longer sees his own face
(Luo 1975: 137–138)
This is one of the most compelling of the poems because it balances
expression with the use of symbol. The image of the mirror appears
twice, and it is here that Luo Fu’s struggle with the question of identity
in alienation is in some ways resolved. The first stanza indicates that the
speaker hopes to break the mirror; this represents the possibility of free-
dom. The second stanza shows him at a “strategic hamlet,” basically
villages that were turned into prisons to keep the civilian population
under control and prevent contact with the Communists. The speaker is
surrounded by images of death—the poplar tree is a symbol of death
that dates back to antiquity in the Chinese tradition. Midway through
the third stanza, we encounter a curious image—the speaker compares
his hands to fish, but he cannot say what kind for sure. The answer to
the riddle comes in the final stanza when the speaker dances around a
well and hopes to see his reflection. This is impossible because the well
has dried up, the water-mirror has vanished. He cannot confirm his
identity based upon his reflection because the mirror has disappeared.
The mirror having disappeared indicates that any attempt to reflect
upon the nature of the self is impossible. In Death of a Stone Cell, the
identity of the face in the mirror could not be used to confirm the
mirror; in the “Saigon Poems,” the mirror is lost altogether. This facet
of the mirror image in Luo Fu’s poetry emerged only after he went to
Vietnam. There likely is a strong correlation between his experience of
the Vietnam War and the sense of futility or impossibility in establish-
ing the self. Luo Fu encountered war in mainland China and on
Quemoy, but the difference in the case of Vietnam is that he was in a
foreign country. His exile from China was complete. Conception of
the self therefore became impossible outside the context of China.
74 John Balcom
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