Thursday, June 4, 2009

Thought for the Day: Bei Dao on Tiananmen Square Martyrs

Not your bodies but your souls/shall share a common birthday every year/you are all the same age/love has founded for the dead/an everlasting alliance/you embrace each other closely/in the massive register of deaths.

Bei Dao, Old Snow, trans. Bonnie S. McDougall and Chen Maiping (NY: New Directions, 1991), "Requiem,” p. 11.