Excerpt from Another Kind of Tenderness

by Xue Di

From Cat's Eye in a Splintered Mirror

2

These characters I love
come towards you out of the oil of
red trees, sighing a bachelor's sighs
In a blue-winged bird's noon nap
a cheerful batch of words get into
line, their short little arms extended gracefully up
in the west wind. Classic redolence
A pony snorts across the street
Kids race a lyric one-way road
Pine nuts fall down through afternoon rays
Other words bounce on the hard ground, carrying short
shadows with them, and with what solemnity
Now a gray cat passes through a tall mirror
in the living room. Precise words
search out a quiet and a solid house

Gone is the man who manured the grassland
In June two birds with yellow speckles
fly scorching storms
to build their nest in this refined and
tranquil corridor. Such a ring of waters
images your love's depth
In heavy fog, a long loud horn
wails the night through for fish returning
A swan conducts a flock of ducks
swimming through your short slumber. Birds at dusk
fill the darkening sky with hints of tenderness

5

Imagine you're in unfolding layers of landscape
bright in the distance, a foreground of accented
shadows. Cool colored flowers in light turn hazy
A man living by the water loves lowland cities
The long-distance traveler ascends in experience
Things pose themselves as they are. When I
think of you, that mountain bird, black with a red neck, flies
towards a farther tree

The farther tree is lonelier. At sunset
it's the first to dim. Brids on the wing
hasten shadows downward
Sightseers make the distance dim
Then the lowlands. The wailing of deer
sounds from a disappearing landscape
I'm thinking of you. Late at night
the return road fills with turns

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