Chang Te-pen / 張徳本
Chang Te-pen(b. 1952), native Kaohsiung, Taiwan, is the Director of Taiwan Literary Celebrity Foundation, a well- known expert in creative writing, critic in literary, arts and movies fields, and a resident author and lecturer of literature workshops, critic of Kaohsiung Film Archive. His publications of contemporary poetry and essay include “Garden of the Future”, “Swimming is Our Living Sea” and others, some of his works have been selected into various anthologies published in Taiwan, Japan and United States. His great work "The Target of Successive Generations" is an epic with two thousand and five hundred lines written in Taiwanese language depicting Taiwan's history in dialectics and virtuosity. Some of his poems have been translated into English and published in Poem Hunter.
E-mail:pen410221@yahoo.com.tw
In galaxy and Nebulae / 佇銀河星雲
In galaxy and nebulae
Mirrors the deep and lustrous
Kind of planet
Reflecting its alike twins
Already existing for trillion generations
The trillion light years beyond the universe and outer space
In galaxy and nebulae
Matters not a day-time or a night
The planets distributed the gravity without right or wrong
Flying stones, dusts and rocks drifting without gain or loss
Nebula alternating its light and dark in deep outburst
The instant birth and death of meteor’s collision
In galaxy and nebulae
Every moment is like this life
Setting forth the human in earth
The future is an unpredictable journey
Subsisting in a spacecraft with constant temperature
The heading direction beyond cold and hot
In galaxy and nebulae
Sperm and ovum combining the continuation of embryo
Youth withered in flight
Life a newborn in flight
Soaring further to a deep and gloomy milky way
The difference of love and hate gradually become vague
In galaxy and nebulae
The countless stars flashing high in universe
Dodging a farewell, separation is beyond the countless light years
Suddenly find one like the twin of earth
A new birth or a casting shadow ?
The contradiction of lonesomeness and intimacy entangled in an encounter
An Age Neither Awake Nor Asleep / 袜袂當醒袜袂當睏的時代
It’s an age either for one can eat or drink
Also an age not to awakes, neither for asleep
It’s an age either for the disguised or for the non-ashamed
Also an age to persist not, neither to forsake
It’s an age either for exploitation or for distortion
Also an age not for rebellion, neither for allegiance
It’s an age either for self-profane or for sanctity
Also an age neither free nor self-caged
It’s an age either benevolent or cruel
Also an age not for liberation, neither for conservative
It’s an age either for exaggeration or for arguments
Also an age neither for precipitation nor for silence
It’s an age either for Taiwan or China
Also an age not to localize neither to globalize
It’s an age either for crying or laughing
Also an age not to involve, neither to depart
It’s an age either for karaoke or nonsense
Also an age neither to say No nor OK
Being pondered of what the age will be
A constant voice asked
“As well what are you in the age ?”
Swim is Our Living Sea / 泅是咱的活海
How many hill tops tapped by history
How many heads were chopped?
Dropping into the ravine
Nobody knows
History floating over the sea
The salinity of blood and tears
Melting in the waves
Nobody knows
The creeping vine of history
Maltreat the winding soul of wrongly accused
The seed lost its life experiences
Nobody knows
Sail the ship of history
No harbor to land
The past that we can’t tell
Nobody knows
Nobody knows its name--the island of history
Like the sika* captured
Like the whale killed
The people competed to make names
But names unknown to their own
The wrongly treated history
The tolerant spine of the island
The cumulative months and years
Resentment of the fossil
Unknown the future and when
Turnover of a big earthquake
Once to sway the fish tail
The more swinging the farther the island
The destiny of the whales, big or small
Just keep on swimming
Keep on swimming is our living sea
That everyone should know
The opposite shop (People Republic of China)
Boiling a pot of oil at any time
Anyone was detained
Throwing in the pot frying a dead fish
*Sika: Formosan Deer