WONG SIN

Poem

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Tree of Desires
The desires of history overlap with modern desires
Interconnect, entangle, contort
The endless verdant branches envelop
The pair of bare bodies in embrace and beyond
Lovers and strangers gnaw on one
Bitter dead leaf
Chewing the same pleasure, different yearnings
Gazes and moonlight intertwine and twirl
Countless branches burrow into
Soft orifices of various dimensions
Like tender buds unable to support the heavy expectations,
Filled just right, even painfully stretched open
Like a young bud unable to bear overzealous expectations
Repetitive and violent swaying invokes your pitying gaze; its entranced, rapid pace; your cries
Desires run ever farther away

You lie down
Your spine parallel to the robust tree trunk
Like the difference between being asleep and dreaming
You’d rather choose ignorance and harbour the most primal needs
The patterns of the tree resemble churning internal organs, and genitals, full of life
Which do you prefer: Winding pink large intestines or the branches of the tree?
Some people overindulge and burst their intestines
Ah
It’s always sexy calling your name in a foreign language
Throat vibrating
Fine droplets cover its lustrous body
Don’t die at this moment of orgasmic excess
Don’t collapse at this moment of too much expectation
Even though trees cannot understand human language
Even humans sometimes cannot understand human language
Eyeballs are trembling
Vision blurring from fatigue
Desires are rotting

I’m going to carve out your heart and examine it closely
So I don't have to listen to those true yet false lies
As a tree, its hollow rigid husk becomes
An invulnerable vessel
Incapable of recognising the form and texture of warmth and lust
Treelike capillaries burrow deep into the moist earth
Silent sweat forms a spring, drop by drop
Suspended amidst bones
Suspended within gazes
When the woods suddenly fall down, there is only a clanging boom
Containing unspeakable melancholy within its crisp finality
Looking at flowers in the mist
The flowers are like bodies
Exquisite

As long as one doesn’t mention it
It’s all in the past, as unrecorded history
Untraceable
Homeless
As long as you forget about me, the past will also vanish
Uprooted and sourceless
You hide within the invisible air,
The suspended human floats in mid-air
He spreads his ancient wings to shield the storm
The wind cannot pass his body
His eyes are aglow, like all the light of the sun
For the ones streaking through the forest
Distant desires cling to the mud between their toes
Moonlight and gazes in prolonged double exposure
Project onto the sternum
On every tree
Freedom got blood-red, like a scar
Trees grow
Into hearts

Translated by Jason Chan, Wong Sin