The Dead Soldier's talk by Ha Jin

The Dead Soldier’s Talk
In September 1969, in a shipwreck accident on the Tuman River, a young Chinese soldier was drowned saving a plaster statue of Chairman Mao. He was awarded Merit Citation 2, and was buried at a mountain foot in Hunchun County, Jilin.

I’m tired of lying here.
The mountain and the river are not bad.
Sometimes a bear, a boar, or a deer
       comes to this place
as if we were a group of outcast comrades.
I feel lonely and I miss home.
It is very cold when winter comes.
I saw you coming just now
like a little cloud wandering over grassland.
I knew it must have been you,
for no other had come for six years.
Why have you brought me wine and meat
       and paper-money again?
I have told you year after year
that I am not superstitious.
Have you the red treasure book with you?
I have forgotten some quotations.
You know I don’t have a good memory.
Again, you left it home.
How about the statue I saved?
Is it still in the museum?
Is our Great Leader in good health?
I wish He live ten thousand years!
Last week I dreamed of our mother
showing my medal to a visitor.
She was still proud of her son
and kept her head up
while going to the fields.
She looked older than last year
and her grey hair troubled my eyes.
I did not see our little sister.
She must be a big girl now.
Has she got a boy friend?
Why are you crying?
Say something to me.
So you think I can’t hear you?
In the early years
you came and stood before my tomb
swearing to follow me as a model.
In recent years
you poured tears every time.
Damn you, why don’t you open your mouth?
Something must have happened.
What? Why don’t you tell me!

By Ha Jin
This poem originally appeared in The Paris Review, #101, Winter 1986.

The Haircut
When we quarreled last time
you promised to give me a special haircut.
Yesterday you fulfilled your word
by shaving my head bald.
You could not straighten your body
and laughed until tears came to your eyes.
How proud you were
while telling your friends
about the masterwork at home!
Our daughter laughed too.
She laughed,
for her daddy’s head was shining like a bulb.
In fact, I also laughed at myself,
for when I lost my first love
I shaved my head the same way.
In our town everybody sighed and shook his head
seeing me walking in the streets
without my dark curly hair
except the girl I loved
who laughed and loved my haircut.
Ha Jin

It takes so long to forget

An embrace for a season may take a lifetime of winters to forget.
A kiss from a lover's lips makes an eternity seem like a short breath.
@ YMC October 2013

Why (draft)

I miss you
I wish I didn't but I do.
I remember we once met
We made love
And at some point after I fell in love with you.
It was our conversation, your company that touched my heart
The more I got to know you the more I wanted to be with you.
Perhaps the opposite was the same with you.
I don't know.
I don't know because you won't write back.
I wish you would say something
Tell me why
What did I do wrong?
Will I see you again?

Love is so fleeting
Forgetting takes so long.
You now seem like a dream I had a long time ago.
A good dream
But a dream that is fading.
Not a day goes by without my thinking of you.I browse through my memories like a child re-reads his favorite story book.
Mesmerized at the special pages.
Whispering out the words.
Memory is such a cruel thing
It won't let me forget you.

But I fear you are indifferent to my affection, even my being.

My love for you is undaunted by your silence (draft)

with appreciation to pablo neruda...


I am undaunted by your silence
It is like the night sky
Beautiful, full of mystery,


I am undaunted by your silence
It is as though you were asleep in my bed
And you cannot speak

I am undaunted by your silence
It is as if you were far away
And my voice does not reach you.

I am undaunted by your silence
It is as if you do not know the right words to say
And you are thinking.

I am undaunted by your silence
It is as if you are weeping and cannot speak
And I am on the other side of your door.

Let me come to be still in your silence
To gaze into your mystery
To watch you as you sleep
To draw near to your faraway place
To find the right words to say
To open your door.

A Dolphin's Song

I dive the deep blue
To depths no man has been
I am wild
I am free
You will not touch me

Yet you come with hook and net
To ensnare to kill
You would devour the entire sea for your next meal
You herd my brethen
You cage some.
You kill the others.

We who were once many
Are now so few
You who were once so few
Are now so many
One day you will kill us all
Even me
But not today


As I rise up to breathe
I break free
from the bounds of my watery world
I jump
Briefly I fly
I soar through the sky
I feel so alive.
       Yauming Chiam 2013  

Tonight I can write the saddest lines by Pablo Neruda

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
Write, for example, 'The night is starry
and the stars are blue and shiver in the distance.'

The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

Through nights like this one I held her in my arms.
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.
She loved me, sometimes I loved her too.

How could one not have loved her great still eyes.
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.

To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.
What does it matter that my love could not keep her.

The night is starry and she is not with me.
This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

My sight tries to find her as though to bring her closer.
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.

The same night whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tries to find the wind to touch her hearing.

Another's. She will be another's. As she was before my kisses.
Her voice, her bright body. Her infinite eyes.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her.
Love is so short, forgetting is so long.

Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms
my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer
and these the last verses that I write for her.

Phoenix fire - Draft

(This is a fictional story of a fireman who lost everything during the terrible bushfire on Black Saturday in Victoria 2009. I haven't completed it yet.)

Phoenix Fire thy beauty inspire
Mortal Men to accomplish immortal things,
Through heat and molten rain
Thy Birth is borne in utter pain

A man stands alone on a pristine beautiful beach. He is tall, handsome, well built, rugged. A perfect specimen of Australian manhood. Once he was offered a spot on the Collingwood football team. He rejected it, he hated Collingwood. :)


He is alone. Early morning. The air is bitingly cold. But the man does not notice even though he’s wearing just a pair of board shorts.

The beach is immense; the white sandy shoreline stretches for miles. There is absolutely no sign of human habitation. No cigarette butts, no broken bottles, just white fine sand washed for eons in the cold salt oceanic waters.

It was as beautiful as it was since the first day of creation.

He has been staring out into the vast ocean for a long time, it seems to have a hypnotic hold on him. Suddenly, he breaks into a jog, crashed into the roaring surf and dives into the foaming sea and starts swimming straight towards the horizon.

His name is Jack Brown and he's going to kill himself today.




He swam through that cold sea. The frigid current from the Antarctic met the South Australian Ocean here. His breaths were measured. His movements calm. Jack looked quite relaxed for someone who was planning to commit suicide by drowning. He planned to just swim until he ran out of strength and the ocean consumes him.

Jack was quite calm. Ridiculously serene actually. Everything seemed matter of fact. He didn't want to live any more. And today was a good day to die. He would just continue swimming pacing himself. Be the first man to swim to the South Pole, he thought to himself, and added “and then to be eaten by a Polar Bear”, and laughed.

Yet his strong sinewy muscles grew cold in the waters. Hypothermia was setting in. After a few more hours, he would get muscle cramps, he would struggle in the open sea. The dark waves would swallow him and he would finally drown.

All kinds of thoughts and past events were swirling around in his head like a merry go round. But it was too painful, too horrible for him to remember. He struggled with the haunting images in his mind and failed to overcome them. And so retreated into the physical world and concentrated on his swimming. Crafting every stroke. Measuring each breath. Perfecting the motion. Onwards he swam boldly in the blue sea. Alone and unafraid of its cold dark depths, yet paradoxically fearful of the monsters that slumbered inside his own mind.
After several hours of swimming, he heard a voice. He paused, incredulous. He was by now miles out into the open sea. He kept on swimming and the voice grew more louder and desperate. He stopped swimming again and started looking around. Was he going crazy? It was a woman's voice. Insane, out here??? And she was crying for help.

3

Jack swam towards the sound of her cries for help and found the drowning woman. She was struggling in the current, exhausted and desperately trying to keep her head above water.

He reached her just as she was about to disappear beneath the grey sea.

"What the hell are you doing out here?"

She spluttered: "Who are .... I'm fucking drowning. What the hell do you think??".

His eyes was still clouded in disbelief and then she snapped, "The boat!"

He turned and looked - and saw the yacht a few miles away.

The current was strong - and it was a tough struggle to reach the boat. There was a loud party that was going on - plenty of alcohol. Pretty women in colorful bikinis. It didn't seem as if anyone would have noticed them. Fortunately, someone spotted their cries for help and a small dingy was launched to help Jack.

4

By this time everyone on the ship stopped whatever they were doing and watched the dingy rescue.

Jack felt very self conscious as they were both helped onto the deck. He felt uneasy with all the attention, especially the young women whose eyes wandered over his body sinfully.

A tall large man came forward and put out his hand.

"Mate, thanks for saving my wife."

"Yeah, no worries."

"My name with Kerry Wever. My mates call me "Weave". And this is my boat. Make yourself at home. Can I get you a beer mate?"



Jack shrugged. But Weave pushed a bottle into his hands.

"Here have this. Its great stuff – it’s a boutique Tasmanian lager." I liked it so much I bought the brewery.

The tall man eyed Jack inquisitively and rolled, "So where's your boat?"

Jack stared stone faced not knowing what to say. A few of the beautiful young girls crowded around Kerry, staring at the stranger with cat like femininity.

He stammered, the effects of the hypothermia still clogging his brain cells, "I don't have one... I err... I was out for a swim."

"You were out for a WHAT?!!!"  a bemused Kerry barked, almost choking on his words.

The girls started giggling.

"A Swim." muttered Jack defensively.

"Out here?"

"@#k mate. You've come out a @#king long way for a @#$king swim mate." Kerry said with a mocking tone.

A grizzly looking man from the boat's bridge - leaned over the railing and said,

"Boss, if you're trying to swim to Tasmania you're a bit late mate."

"Tasmania???" Jack startled, feeling very foolishly. He had this image of himself running aground into a Tasmania beach and screwing up his suicide attempt.

"A sheila's done it already. Swam there in 14 hours across the Bass. But you're going the wrong way mate, you're heading to the South Pacific Ocean."

At this stage, Jack angrily gritted his teeth and wanted to jump back into the ocean and carry on his swim the moment their backs were turned.

Kerry, having had a good laugh, and seeing the pain in Jack's face, slapped him on his back.

"Sorry son. We're just having some fun."

"Sit down. You must be exhausted. You're 100km out at sea."

"Come join us - we've got some great sausages on the barbie."


The aroma of fresh barbecued steak and sausages drifted through the air. But to Jack it was a stench. The smell of burnt meat nauseated him.

When he saw the BBQ machine, his face turned pale. On that grill instead of sausages lay the body parts of a child sizzling in the flames.


(to be continued...)


YaummingChiam Copyright 2009