Oo Tiong-siong / 胡長松

Oo Tiong-siong（alias Hu Chang-sung, b. 1973）, was the secretary-general of Taiwanese Pen and currently is the chair of the literature journal “Taiwanese Battlefront”. He writes fictions and poems in Taiwanese and won several awards including Taiwan Literature Award 2008. His publications include poetry “The City with Chessboard Streets”, and fictions “Gun fires”, “Under the Lighthouse” and others. 

E-mail ：tiongsiong.oo@gmail.com

        Our Pens Are Being Wings / 阮的筆是翼

Our pens are being a gun
To fire is not due to cruelty

Our pens are being a knife
To sheathe is not due to weakness

Our pens are being a mast
On the night sea with threats
To point up to the star of wish
And as the wind blows
To make full sail
So that, it is being the power of
Our insisting

Our pens are being wings
Joy or sorrow whenever we meet
They lead us and fly back
To our warm restful homeland
With not any a gun or a knife

        Back to Lai-ui Pond / 轉去內惟埤

Again I saw your powerful footprints
Brave Makatao children
You walked around the pond shore with the willows in Spring
And sang out a song for water hyacinth

From farms to farms
From channels to channels
You ran and searched for Tsit-a and Tua-thau-lian*
And your hands, gripped the fluctuating power of Lai-ui Pond

As tightly as freedom your hands gripped

And you have been calling for in the past 400 years

You will never let it swim off a bit
No matter how slick it has been.

Again I saw your powerful footprints
Brave Makatao children
While you walked around the plain the sunrise of Taibu Mountain shines on
Each of which is a song for life and honor.

                                Note: * Tsit-a and Tua-thau-lian are both kinds of fishes that

                                    are common in Taiwan

        Elegy  / 哀歌

He is a father of someone.

He is a tomorrow.

One drum of wars

Hanged on the roof of his house.

His forehead was cut by the collapsed house.

And the tiles trodden on by ten thousands wolves

are the tiles of himself.

His wife and daughters love him, which is not a secret.

He is a very high tree.

And the birds of the whole autumn roared for him

When he was falling down.

His bones will become the soil of his motherland.

He is the lost home in everyone’s heart.