Lin Fo-er
Lin Fo-er（b. 1941）established Lin-Po Publishing Company in 1968 and founded“Taiwan Poetry Quarterly” in 1983 and then a first Mystery Magazine in Taiwan in 1984. As a publisher, poet and writer, he published himself sixteen books in total, including poems, essays and novels. He is considered as the best and the first Taiwanese mystery writer. His books of poetry include ”Mango Fields”, “The Heart of Taiwan” and “Twelve Poems of The Saline Land”.
The Saline Land
We never expect to be the salt of the trampled people on our land.
We differ from black coal
After being congealed.
We have snow-white skin
Buried deep underground, we cling
To sea and rocks,
We burn.
We crystalize.
Through gullets
We are not simply a bunch of minerals.
We can poeticize praising
And become landscapes and rivers ceaselessly.
We run through man's bosoms.
We multiply and die out constantly
In the saline land.
Crude and lowly,
We persevere as everlasting, free granules
Sparkling on the barren land
Oh, salt! Oh, salt!
The Qigu Lagoon
Waves surge in the azure Pacific Ocean.
Like galloping steeds,
They chase one after another with rhythm.
How rich the life is here!
The Island of Formosa has emerged
As a boat tempering for thousands of years!
It is not a shark, a roe, or a legendary fish
But a sperm whale that is not to be extinct,
Absorbing all the essence of the ocean.
The Qigu Lagoon is the left fins of the sperm whale,
Encircling the sandbanks of three hamlets and
Blocking the roaring waves of the Taiwan Straits.
In the lagoon live oysters and shellfishes,
And swim fish and crabs.
The last clean waters of the western coast
Feed twenty-thousand people.
At the entrance to Qigu River and on the shore of the lagoon
Rare species of plants grow in saline soils,
Forming a bold landscape.
On the green and unspoiled waters,
Plovers and black-faced egrets from Siberia,
Numbering seven hundred and eight spend the winter in search of food here.
Mingling the northern bitter cold and the southern intense heat,
They hold a four-month long feast of the lagoon each year.
Now under the bright sun
Tourists sightsee the lagoon on rubber rafts,
Praising the magnificent scenery God creates.
At sunset on the dike and the tower for ocean view,
The lagoon spreads out like a bolt of silk.
The setting sun and the rising moon meet.
Both are round, differing only in pale yellow and tangerine colors.
The sparkling lagoon is vast and serene.
The Site of Solitude
Under the bright sky of Qigu
The lagoon
Is home to the migrant black-faced egrets
As well as plovers.
Some deserted salt farms
Spread out on hundred hectares of vacant lots.
There emerges a lost hamlet
On the site of solitude.
My poetry all of sudden is stranded here.
I put up a tablet inscribed with drawings and words
To burn the image of the saline land.
I depict crude salts
“We persevere as everlasting, free granules
Sparkling on the barren land.”
On the site of solitude,
Man is solitary, so are life and
Poetry.
On the site of solitude,
Supposing an yearning star settled in Xiliao,
It views the sun sets in the west.
That is a place of serenity;
That is a place of civilization;
That is a place of paradise.
I wish to be on the site of solitude
Under the bright sky of Qigu.
The Stranger
The two figures in the distance
Are not knights in the wilderness.
They face the setting sun,
Dancing to the beat of beauty
And discussing aesthetic colors and angles,
In silence and words.
They are the strangers of the earth,
Submitting themselves to aesthetics.
The red setting sun
Is not a mirage as seen from afar.
Like a round and perfect yolk and
Unlike a parabola head-on,
It drops on the edge of the globe in a flash,
Wandering
Without sorrow or other feelings.
It is the free stranger of the cosmos.
A Secluded Path
An non-trodden path
Stretches toward the sentry post and shore
And stand electric wire poles.
An extraordinary sight:
Wild flowers and awns line up to great people.
Herons flit by,
And plovers halt.
Some anglers ride motorcycles
To rush here
Startling the boundless vast.
The red setting sun wanders thoughtlessly
To follow people here and there.
The redness hung in the front
Seems to be the most splendid color
Splashing here.
The secluded path is bound to be serene and man solitary
Beginning, longitude, and latitude
Are destined to whatever place.
This dismal philosophy class
Is in session everyday.
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