Solitude

By Ouyang Yu
                                by Ouyang Yu


you are supposed to be preparing your translation
class. but, here you are at it again. driving at the philosophy of it
the senselessness of it that somehow makes sense. ‘did you write about it?’
ups and downs, ups and ups’. ‘right now i’m getting beyond the point
explicity’ ‘which doesn’t mean that it’s not good’. ‘coming to terms
with it takes me 15 years, this loneliness, this solitude, in which you think
you live a death, in which you are constantly hankering after some sort of contact
of recognition, of voices at the ears’. ‘in the end, what matters is the text, not
those who short-list you or award you or criticize you or slot you in here and
there’ ‘nijinsky says: criticism is death’ ‘remember rilke’s letter to the young
poet?’ ‘last month i wrote 40-odd poems, some work, others not quite, and 6 days into
this month i’ve already done 16 poems, such as this one i’m finishing when you ring’
‘read it to me’ ‘i’m attaching notes here about spending two weeks in two countries
but it’s not till i actually started the poem when i realized that i’d spent three winters’
‘read it to me’. poem read. ‘you know, i no longer care about the need to
communicate; i’d rather die in opacity or semi-it if you like, this world too well-
connected for the dead’s comfort. i’m into otherworldly linkages. and i’ve finally
come to terms with this real, real hard thing.’ ‘i’ve got a cold, a very bad cough. let
me check if 13th’s okay, oh, no, peter and teresa are coming. 20th’s we are going to
castlemaine. 12th? let me check. yes, that’ll be fine. but we won’t talk about that; it’s a
bit superstitious, i know’
(from http://www.peril.com.au/edition3/solitude )

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