Memorial for the victims, June 4, 1989Bei Ling Gone is the violence I witnessed The fruits it engendered Now baptized in tides of hatred Again make known its prophecy Disaster, calm and total Joins with pain that is my own To stand rooted beneath a pendulum An entire corps in a cortege Paying mourning rites to memory Yet the past can bear no guilt Creeping age, in spreading circles of futility Forces youth to kneel repentantly Youth is branded with the death-mark Winter has its freedom In the naked barrenness Dreams possess illusions As imaginings have rationality Rearing up in acts of lone endurance They show the weary strength of memory A journey onward Is fraught, as if by a curse, With the force of a heroic end Translated by Denis Mair -------------------------- |