Xie Gu
Temptation of Darkness

Probably the progress of civilization
  Would inevitably be accompanied by
  A harsh frustration
  Or else why an ideal, sometimes
  Became a nightmare
  A sort of choice
  Suddenly made time back flow
  Probably human life
  Really came of mud and rock
  An abyss, was their home town
  Difficult to bid farewell to
  Muddiness and ruthlessness
  Were their ugliness forever invisible
History probably for lasting long enough
  To get benumbed
  Brilliance might be so generous
  That a deluge of things in whatever age
  Probably in the end, all
  Couldn’t avoid an atrophy
Savageness was a hidden rule of instinct
  Once a man was depraved as well as the order
  The power of darkness would tell you
  What a shadow was
An indescribable dance of animosity
  Trampled the soul of moral to pieces
  With time and space illuminated by crimes
  Only a reversed conscience
  Over a vain actuality
  All the pure dignity and tiny happiness
  Would face the wrings of an
  Illiberal reason
  Justice must be devastated
  To see clearly the fact of soul
  Nicety must be demolished
  To set off
  The loftiness of an idol
  Were you not to dedicate all your life to the Devil
  Death, would be
  The price of your character
The entire generation was
  Almost like this, bended
  Under the violent principles
  Being dearly loved by lies
  They had to accept
  The baptism of an ignorant hurricane
  And gave repeatedly along with careerists
  Without a back turning
  The kind culture
  The calm truth
  A big clean-out
The sequacious pleasure
  An unmerciful revelry
  An irrational storm swept over the mansion of democracy
  Confused creeds, struck through
  Nerves of all legal system
  Science was painfully broken down
  Literature and arts, were driven by an extreme
  A purgatory of New China
Human rights in an age, was already
  Totally canceled by
  A persistent hysteria
  The choked human nature
  Could only in a nightmare sorrowfully
  Vindicate in an emotional sigh
  Those nearby angels
  Suffering a trample

Executioners were in a withered garden
  Drinking to their heart’s content
  Thinkers’ blood
  Darkness with its abundant energy
  Was crowning darkness
  All the creations, like fire burning
  Were gushing with a forge-like base singing
  Dirtiness on the broad land
  Was loafing around all day
  Idling away with a bloodshot emptiness,
  A sort of days without culture
  And tasting with a boring fight
  Others’ normal
  Deserving no opposition

As if overnight a race
  All became warriors
  A cradle of civilization
  As if overnight, became everywhere
  A never failing bombing of aural publicity
  A specious
  Attack on knowledge
  Sticks and guns were brandished at progress and innocence
Who could learn unexplainable rants
  Who would ascend
  The vogue of this time
  Betrayal was hope
  To betray, would bring you
  Rays of desire
  A false accusation was a passion one must have
  To tell on someone was sometimes also
  A sort of belief
  Persecution could bring a balance to many people
What deserved commiseration
  Keeping a standpoint firm
  You were the people, being the people
  You would never lose your bearing
Logic was losing its chastity awkwardly and shyly
  Axiom sadly backed off
  Ignorance dominated
  The spirit of the entire society
  A bloody fairy tale
  Could make absurdity
  Quickly uproot
  All kind men’s “stagnant” vision
Do not say to me
  You’ve ever had life
  Do not let me discover
  The degenerative lily of you
  Hidden in the memory
  And the butterfly of serious problems
  Do not let me feel the warmth you’ve ever had
Harmony was a sort of rottenness
  In this time of us wanting flames
  Day and night
  Loftiness was already unable to serve as a model
  The magnificence of original truth
  Had long been not fresh
You should know how to
  Destroy and create
  Be sure not to let a dagger drowsy
  Only through an undisguised revolution
  Only after swallowing
  All the poisonous grass writing
  You can then realize, a sort of
  Merriment to oaths

O, darkness
  Where were you from
  From where did you descend
  In what name did you descend
  To paralyze the unyielding
Did your droopy moonlight
  Softening our imagination
  Endow memory with endless pains
  Was mankind only so
  Could it attain rich thought
  With which for us to mock nature
  To adore craziness
  For all our rusticity like notes fleeing hither and thither
  To evaporate one by one
  Among the faddish savageness and wilds
  And for kiss, to immediately
  Make a lover wither away in beguiling arms
A face secreting evil
  Thus presented but
  A terrible health
Conspiracies being immersed in an abscondence of humanity
  Terrorism, again
  The sweetness of autarchy
  We were as if tightly wound
  By a charming evil magic
  Sucking the pale
  Sucking a poison mushroom-like consciousness
The tongue in its emotional expression of immense lies
  Along with a sort of eddy
  Could only be filled with
  A perplexity after meaningless hubbubs
To be involuntary, or
  To speak insincerely
  Were all not
  Our fault
  A planet was catching fire
  Many an eye were getting blind
  Maniacs were with their skulls
  Decorating benignly
  Their dark sky
  A spiritual aroma
  Exhaled from the dead
  Occasionally would also make the devil
  Somehow or other
  Beneath the lonesome heaven
  Was also chillily splitting
  With a woe of creation
  Whose shocking dissimilation
  Seemed as if summing up a sort of punishment
  Human elites
  Must at this point become rats
  And had to at this point comb secretly
  The years ignorant of its fate
  In a social abhorrence
  With no asylum attainable

This world
  Needed a disinfection at large
  Iodine was needed to rub on political patients
  Ruthlessly on those rebels sinister gangs
  A reactionary academic authority
  As well as unconscious evil cells of all the capitalist-road chooser
  Dreams and the like
  Must be completely destroyed
All languages, should only be
  For that kind of
  Liberation not to be seen until forever
  Knock down, comma
  Knock down, period
  Knock down knock down knock down
  Knock down bad elements
  Exclamation mark
  Exclamation mark
  Exclamation mark

Your tears
  Were submerged in the ocean
  All perfections
  Were wounded
  Knees knelt heavily under the red flag
  Once defended by your life
  The body that had warded off bullets
  Today, however
  Couldn’t somehow ward off the fatal medals
  That had brought you honor
  Achievements became a humiliation
  And love the rascal
If thinking couldn’t be consistent with the movement
  If each and every family, did not
  Prepare well
  The inflation of loyalty
  Modern fascists
  Would knock on the door
  Cruel genealogy would environ you
  Until it checked up your three generations, for why
  You were all dressed so
O, a lost decade
  A decade when only darkness was lucky
  O, a decade with a continuous conquest of truth
  A decade when terror’s great reputation
  Was edifying your body
  Great teachers were banished by stupid men
   Batches by batches
   Treasures and essence of human civilization
  In large exiles for times
  Could hear no more the wail of value
The firelight flaming
  Your lips tirelessly
  Still wanted to ask for instructions whatever
  Phantoms being flickering
  You did not dare to be clear about
  What sort of indignation this was in human life
  Intelligence was collapsing
  Growth was hesitating at the verge of death
  The upper air was pouring noise at midnight
  Even if facing a butchery, you
  Must still talk calmly
  No one had secrets
  Mountain chains were staring blankly in desolation
  Compromise in darkness was
  In bud
  Probably to commit suicide was the most effective endurance
  Blood drops rolling down to the earth
  This unique solution
  Radically, perhaps
  Would enable the people to forgive all
  Did our paddy fields still need
  Those stained stomachs
  Did our memos, still need
  Foisting into
  Paper never mewled
  Was our breath audible to hunters
  Hadn’t the shudder of millions of people long been
  Cast into a national martyr
An elf fire was naming an era
  Palace of darkness was alive with none
  But the beauty of sacrificial rites
  O men, being in turmoil
  What did you exactly want to appeal to
  All going to the embrace of Azrael
  Could loneliness really
  Bear afresh one
  A tragic heroicness

Be closer to me
  Wish my lifetime eventually such an opportunity
  Of witnessing with honor again your
  Visage daring to deny all
  Please walk into my heart
  To get a look at a tragedy, and
  A sort of Judgment Day
  Before my five internal organs completely
  Became a fire heap gathered
  On your touch
Darkness, I want to return to you
  The concentrated pressure
  Let you equally at a volcanic crater
  Absolutely inadaptable to you
  Immediately disappear
How could a saintly life allow itself
  To be nourished shamelessly
  By darkness
  Even if you were tough ice, a
  Sort of figure
  Never approachable
  Even if you were a thin smell
  A hazy image
  Getting out of our human soul depth
  Cursing brightness
  Even if you were a cocoon firmly entrenched in the palm
  With a hidden predestination
  Swearing not to separate with me
  Yet after a decade of endurance
  A decade of orisons without hope
  After 10 years’ aftertaste scorching but fine
  After all the smash
  Pure as that of jades
  Even after, each second’s
  Dry breath
  Of crossing a dead sea
  Now, a futile bargain
  Has ended
You don’t need to place me anew within your
  Hypocritical rights
  It’s impossible for me to
  Grovel continuously before your
  Brilliance either
  With only one sort of reflection
I want to be in the streets and lanes
  Looking for an aspiration again
  I want to be before a
  Headspring contracting for disservice
  Holding up my ancient and pure expression
  I want to be familiar afresh with
  My dead innocence
Because of an unfounded cowardice and naivety
  A causeless rejection and struggle
  I will remain at
  The horizon obliterated by you
  For the human sympathy
  For a sort of permanent sigh
  Setting up for generations
  A righteous pillar
Let conscience open its mouth
  Whenever some solemn and quiet things
  In the good name of courtesy
  Sneak into a dark night
  Let ears watch out
  What reaching the ear from a faraway forest
  Wish it be
  The greenness enabling us to imagine peace
  But no longer
  Combative rotes
What do we still want to oppose
  Besides death and poverty
  Unblocked dark clouds
  Frailty and earthquakes
  For what should we still
  Be puzzled
  And for none of what
  After a tragedy and catastrophe
  Should we still be slow to resume for ourselves
  The function of subsistence
Brightness has come
  Why do we
  Still need to wait in darkness