Green for Summer in Beijing

When the night wind tires of bearing up

The wings of returning birds

And lays itself down instead on the furl of a dark silting stream,

The blackbird lands on the tip of its branch.

Enfolds does its feathers the tree’s whistling,

Embalms does bitter soil the seeds of the grass.

As the blackbird, in moonlight, remembers the green of the grass,

I remember the green willows and their floating whisps

Both sides of the road in Beijing

Where the languid man with a blue cap opened the shop every morning

To sing out “fresh sugarcane”, lonesome as a medieval knight;

I remember the door with spring couplets stuck to it,

Written on the two strips of red paper

Leftover from New Year’s.

The blackbird’s song holds the green of the grass in it,

And I carry with me the warm wind that swept away the willow whisps

And blew right through the trees

On both sides of the road –

What in me is worth remembering, but that in summer

I tasted cool stem of sugarcane under the willows

And a kite was caught

On one of their branches?