Chinese text 01:

 

 

Wanting so much to learn the classifier for poems

about classifiers, I sought out the wisest teacher;

she handed me a black ceramic pot the spout of which

now daily flowers into smog. I needed more:

the Second Way, she said, was a devotion

to propaganda, perhaps a shot at life on the petulant seas.

But the white stallion with its cloud-draped hooves

& silk-thread mane never turned up for collection.

Nor did my Vietnamese mother who had forsaken me on this,

the eve of the lunar new year. Only thus did I learn

that I am from Australia, that I am an Australian

– an ungracious people, I have read, whose marketable skills

include pressing the eject button on history,

that constellation of CD players in the sky.

& so I was: a spinning disc who spoke often

but recorded nothing, not even the tiniest byte.

I had a thirst that strong white liquor couldn't quench.

I was always hungry, especially at night.

For hours I would channel surf a TV that had been turned

upside down & emptied of intelligible signs.

Once I woke up parched in the first gradient of day

when the morning meal is not yet served;

the eggs, alive & cackling. In empty

rooms throughout the hotel, lacy curtains heaved out

— absolute silence — snatching at grey, smoke-laden air.