Yang Lian: 1989

who says the dead can embrace?
like fine horses     manes silver grey
standing outside the window in the freezing moonlight
the dead are buried in the days of the past
in days not long past     madmen were tied onto beds
rigid as iron nails
pinning down the timbers of darkness
the coffin lid each day closing over like this

who says the dead are dead and gone?     the dead
enclosed in the vagrancy of their final days
are the masters of forever
four portraits of themselves on four walls
butchery yet again     blood
is still the only famous landscape
slept into the tomb they were lucky     but they wake again in
a tomorrow the birds fear even more
this is no doubt a perfectly ordinary year