Half-Poems
I like writing half poems
that I know I will never finish.
A finished poem
can’t ease a death or
quicken a life
and I wonder why
I still try
to write poems
and finish them.
A finished poem
belongs to anyone who reads it,
people you know or don’t know,
people who love you,
people you dislike.
My half-poems belong to myself alone.
— Yu Xiang (born 1970)
translated from the Chinese by Fan Jinghua and David Lehman