Chen Kun-lun / 陳坤崙
Chen Kun-lun(b. 1952)was an editor of Great Stage Bookstore Publishing Co. and now is Chairman of Chuen-hwui Publishing Co. and Chuen-hwui Printing House, as well as co-founder and president of Literary Taiwan Magazine. He was awarded with Excellent Youth Poet Prize in 1975. His published poems include Speechless Little Grass(1974)and Human Firehouse(1980).
E-mail:literarytaiwan@seed.net.tw
Speechless Little Grass / 無言的小草
So long as you can’t understand
You take a hoe to shovel me away
As if convicted of a big crime and burned me to ashes
So long as you get tired
You lie on me
To let me taste alone the feeling of being insulted
So long as you are idle
You weed out my tender stalk and root
Tear up easily like a sheet of paper
And end my life
No matter how you treat me
I can’t but endure
Because I am only a little grass
I’ve been waiting
Until one day I’ll eat your fat
And then cover you
Thrush Birds / 畫眉鳥
Thrush birds like to be jailed
In a cage covered with a black cloth
Thrush birds
Would rather live in a dark world
Than see the lively, intelligent humans
As soon as they see people with blinking eyes
They will die of fear at once
Within one hour
How fearful humans are
Maybe only thrush birds know
The Sea as a Man / 大海這個人
All sizes of rivers in the word
Besiege and assault me from all directions.
The filthy and stinking river water,
Together with oil dregs, garbage , and decomposed dead animals,
All besiege and assault me.
Thereupon, to preserve my purity , I create waves from my heart ,
Rolling and surging,
To push the filths they have manufactured
Back to the seashores of the word.
Day after day without stop
I prove to the people in the word in a rage
That I am still immaculate.
A Soil Thief / 偷土記
In a soilless city
I have to become a soil thief
In order to cultivate flowers
When there’s nobody watching
I , with a plastic bag and a knife in hand
Nervously begin my stealthy act
With the grass and trees all looking at me
I seem to hear
The indistinct laughter of the wind and trees
They must be laughing at me : the first soil
Thief in history
(Translated by William Marr )