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then you go on dying dying in plaster then the pitch-black snow inside the womb goes on falling then the face is not while burning pain on the face is wound is not while the ripe age preserved by beheading is staying awake is not but sleeping more than a century is eyelids oozed the blue of eyes then even mask is not in the candlelight facial features are an early-winter field a plaster apple is summoning the pitch-black apple trees a plaster baby is summoning the...

since the undated neglected foul blood's due date since the year fell off a bed's edge edged you out since conceiving evil itself conceived what wraps two dripping fruit segments wraps a present too since solitude became your food name turns you into your own tenant since those turning their back on age turned back to a birthday since the nookied cloud sat on a naked spiral stair dazzlingly blue sex of a tigress surged to your sex countless sunken ships show...

I read on the chair I write on the desk I sleep on the floor I dream beside the closet I drink water in spring (The cup is in the kitchen cupboard) I drink water in summer (The cup is in the kitchen cupboard) I drink water in fall (The cup is in the kitchen cupboard) I drink water in winter (The cup is in the kitchen cupboard) I open the window and read I turn on the light and write I draw the curtains and sleep I wake inside the room Inside the room...

Happened upon a pine forest Rock beneath perfect pillow for sleep No calendar sun within mountains cold ends year unknown "Nine Poems from Ancient China" are translated from one of China's most popular collections of traditional verse, the Qian Jia Shi ("Poems of a Thousand Masters") first compiled in the Song Dynasty (960-1279) by the poet Liu Kezhuang. Before he died in 1269 after some eighty-three years of...

The following is an extract from Diálogos de Salamina: un paseo por el cine y la literatura (Tusquets, 2003), a book of conversations between Javier Cercas, author of Soldiers of Salamis, and David Trueba, director and screenwriter of the film of the same name. The novel's narrator is also called Javier Cercas. Here the two writers are discussing the Spanish Civil War and its enduring influence on individuals, society and their own work. Javier Cercas: . . . There's a...

A company of moles following one leader roamed everywhere over the ruins that night. In that deeply silent time before the moon had risen, only the sound of their small rustlings mingled with the wind. The black mole in the lead was unconcerned about the dust that sullied his fine satin coat as he pulled away a smoke-blackened tile shard. He had a vague recollection that this had once been the stovepit of a fat woman. . . . Hidden amid the weeds and grass were many cracks and fissures....

until sky is like a breast popping out from a collar held by horrible hands your hands until slow death displays more distinct violence until a dead drunk fiddle has just shed its feathers until a bird flies into the snow-white structure of its own skull a pair of fleshless orbits stare outside the window staring wind twelve months' paralyzed blood thick smoke in the fireplace always seems like the last time blackening a horrible throat your throat...

These stories are taken from a work-in-progress entitled Heart's Reason: Stories of Affection from the Liaozhai Zhiyi, edited and translated by Susan Wan Dolling. Liaozhai Zhiyi--literally, "Strange (Historical) Stories from a Studio for Leisurely Conversations"--is a posthumous collection of five hundred-odd entries that the author Pu Song-ling made into little books called juan and circulated among his scholar friends during the last thirty or so years of his relatively long life...

1 I wait forever For the wall To awake Leaves have fallen to the ground Leaving behind nothing but a bird and its nest Quiet on my birthday Withered grass on all sides Parched but still alive In the narrow lane crickets research their music My birthday comes in the fall I can only speak of The many stones cast down By the sun, a sign of the living 2 I began this wait Many years ago Snowflakes scattered across the concrete Ice on the pond...

Wang spent periods of seclusion throughout his life in many different places--but in his middle years he acquired his famous WheelRim River (Wang River) retreat in the WholeSouth mountains, just south of Ch'ang-an. It was there that the conjunction of Wang's painting and poetry coalesced in his famous WheelRim River Sequence, and a corresponding scroll painting: probably his best-known poem and painting. 1 ElderCliff Cove At the mouth of ElderCliff, a rebuilt house1...

I should declare in a steady and powerful voice that the world itself is just a prolonged "mew," which has been fried and served to us instead of a noble "moo." -V. Khlebnikov You ask me what America looks like? America looks like the Aegean Sea. In the West it is inhabited by tribes of bellicose Hollywood people. In the East there are trade cities of Phoenicians and New Yorkers. In the middle, there is a large archipelago of universities and colleges, and boats of cunningly smart...

1 There's an expression that describes me: timid as a mouse. That's what my teacher said, back when I was in primary school. It was one autumn, I remember, in Chinese class. Our teacher stood on the rostrum, wearing a dark blue cotton jacket over a clean white shirt. I was sitting in the middle of the front row, looking up at him. He held a textbook in his hand, and his fingers were coated with red, white, and yellow chalk dust. As he read the text aloud, his face and his hands and...

My father used to be a surgeon. He was strong and healthy, and talked in a resonant voice. He would often stand at the operating table for ten hours at a time, but at the end of his shift his face would not show the slightest signs of fatigue, and as he walked back to our apartment his steps were loud and firm. Nearing home, he would often take a pee by the corner of the wall. His urine would splash noisily on the wall, like a sudden downpour of rain. When my father was twenty-five years...

1 The surviving alumni of Huaguang College might remember an event that happened on April 3, 1937. It was the thirtieth anniversary of the founding of the college, and the celebration went on from early morning till late night, events including a tea party, a cocktail party, the unveiling of the bronze bust of the founder of the college, commemoratory speeches, and a performance of Much Ado About Nothing by the students' amateur dramatic troupe. It was a glorious page in the history of...

No one thinks of the flowers. No one thinks of the fish. No one wants to believe the garden is dying, that its heart has swollen in the heat of this sun, that its mind drains slowly of its lush memories. Our garden is forlorn. It yawns waiting for rain from a stray cloud and our pond sits empty, callow stars bite the dust from atop tall trees and from the pale home of the fish comes the hack of coughing every night. Our garden is forlorn. Father says: My time is past my time is past,...

I So hot then red trucks loaded with burning tongues forward forward again disappearing deep down inside escaped students rolling toward hometown Ah the summer of the era schools closed theaters closed weeds in parks loudspeakers over the basketball courts a revolution full blast in Mandarin only teenagers on the bank of an ancient river felt the call they opened their pants took hold of that little thing that had always brought them pleasure like cavemen drilling on a piece of wood till...

Fourth Brother The cap's beak must have exerted a quiet pressure—Fourth Brother confidently approaches: "You on your way home too? You're Li family, NanPo, south slope, yes?" Of course he can tell, family even smile the same way. Under smile, other expressions of molecular genetics syncopate shrugs to the slow train's swaying rhythm. Sound blurs visuals, the background of the soft sleeper softens. Sun. Morning till noon, chatter gossip—yellow soil, caves, people...

After the afternoon in N., something changed. I became cold-blooded and more demanding at the same time; Michael was surprised at me and sometimes didn't know what to do. He hadn't realized, he said one evening, what a wild temperament was hidden inside me, what a volcano. I made wild little celebrations out of our meetings; I waited for him naked in a hotel room; I bought champagne, appeared in a semitransparent robe or wore nothing under my coat as I waited for him at Reception;...

In the Mercantour National Park in the French Alps, feral wolves, recently reintroduced after centuries of extinction, have begun attacking sheep in their pens-not for food, it seems, but for sport. It's a big news story that fascinates Commissaire principal Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg in Paris, despite his having quite other fish to fry. Meanwhile, in the mountain village of Saint-Victor-du-Mont, his ex-girlfriend, the composer-cum-plumber Camille Forestier, supports her current partner,...

"It's a scandal." My companion, a distinguished translator of British literature into Greek, sighed and shook his head as we walked one night last summer through the tangle of streets that make up the old walled citadel of Rhodes. Along with a dozen other European editors and publishers, I had come to the island as a guest of the Greek national translation centre, Ekemel. We were there to meet a group of eminent Greek writers, to learn about their work, and absorb the message that...

Bewitched by Shanghai is narrated by an adolescent, Danny, who lives in postwar Barcelona with his widowed mother. Between school and starting working as an apprentice in a jeweler's workshop, she has arranged for him to accompany Captain Blay in his daily wanderings round the city to make sure he comes to no harm. Captain Blay was wounded in the Civil War and lost his two sons in the fighting. Now he is obsessed with collecting signatures for a petititon to protest about a gas leak...

It had been a good year for olives, too, that year. The farm trees, loaded with buds the year before, had all produced ripe fruit, despite the fog that had threatened their blossoms. Zirafa, who had a good number of them on his farm Le Quote at Primosole, foreseeing that the five old glazed ceramic jars stored in his cellar wouldn't be enough to hold all the olive oil from the new harvest, had already ordered a sixth bigger one from Santo Stefano di Camastra, where they made them;...

ITALIAN SOLDIERS! The Communist Party of Slovenia appeals to you: Do not carry out your superiors' orders, do not fire on the Slovenians, do not persecute the partisans, but surrender to them, do not stand in the way of our liberation struggle! Attack and disarm the fascist militia, the agents of OVRA and all those who are forcing you to fight against the Slovenian people. Destroy the Italian armed forces, the stores of weapons and food, unless you can give them to the...

In Things I've Seen, Victor Hugo acts as witness to a good many uprisings in Paris scattered through the reign of Louis Philippe (1830-48). And so he describes the insurrection of May 12, 1839 (triggered by Barbès, Banqui, and the typographer Martin-Bernard), as well as the unrest in the streets linked to the Revolution of 1848. Sunday, May 12, 1839 I return to the Marais. On Vieille-rue-du-Temple, the terrified housewives chatter on the doorsteps. Here are the details. At...

Iranian author Kader Abdolah describes the plight of a father seeking a burial place for his murdered dissident son.   One stands on the mountains of my country as if on a grave. An abandoned grave; no one knows who lies buried there. During the winter nothing is visible. In spring when the snow has melted, the graves emerge, but they are quickly covered again with wildflowers. It is as if nature were afraid that the graves might be discovered. When mountain climbers come across...