“One letter is enough…” —Liu Xiaobo

1.
Before my bed
there is bright moonlight

Before my bed there is bright
moonlight

Before
my bed there is bright moonlight

Before my bed there
is
bright moonlight

Beforrre my bed therrre is brrright moonlight

2.
Before my bed,
I hang an ‘R’ in a wooden frame,

As a sign of good faith,
Like Jesus always looking down

From a symbol taken seriously by those
Who believe in the Bible as they do in history.

I believe in the R,
Instead.

Because it is the way they speak,
Because it is not the way I speak,

Because it is the way we should speak.
We should celebrate the R,

In our accent, not in English,
But in Beijing Mandarin,

Not the type spoken by Taiwanese,
Or Hong Kongese.

Every night, I gaze at the letter
As if it were the moon.

But how different are they?
For numerous nostalgic nights,

Li Bai saw his home
In the milky moon,

Or the reflection of it
On a nameless lake.

So I gaze at the R
Until its outline blurs in my tired eyes

And resembles a continent,
In which billions of us reside.

3.
We celebrate the alphabet, we celebrate our tongue,
We celebrate the rolling of our tongue

When we roll it like a postgraduate diploma,
We celebrate the beauty of rhoticity,

We celebrate the way we speak,
We celebrate our utterances, full of ferocious velocity.

We steal the R from New Yorkers,
We steal it from the British who are not quite using it.

We steal it from obe t F ost,
We steal it from F ank O’Ha a.

We save it in our mouth, the safest place for treasure.
When we speak, it bestows us a blade

That cuts rocks into pieces,
That opens all ears and makes them listen.

4.
         Before my bed
there is bright moonlight
         so that it seems
like frost on the ground:

         lifting my head
I watch the bright moon
         lowering my head
I dream that I’m

5.
home, calling, standing still,
commanding me to go forth—

a plane lands, objects magnify
outside windows, all now getting real
in December snow, covering
a cityscape unseen before;

a woman congratulates me
on safe landing in Mandarin.
A congratulation, I guess.
I can only catch the Welcome and China;
between the two words she slurs,
over-pronouncing the Rs.

I used never to understand the language.
My passport says I belong legally
to the United States of America. In the aisle,
I wait for the gate to open

6.
Li Bai is not a poet; he is my friend,
A biochemistry engineer from Cornell.

His grandpa named him
After the wise man of words

Because words are what
Young Asian Americans need.

Li Bai is not a poet; his friends are all
Americans. In the bar, they ask him

To recite a Chinese poem.
But he says he knows only

The molecular structure of paper
And density of graphite.

Li Bai is not a poet, but as most poets do,
He looks less lifelike.

On the plane, he imagines grandpa’s corpse
And the village he never visits,

Both looking like the clouds outside,
Being there with a shape he cannot

Name. Soon, he will arrive,
Welcomed by a language made

Up of strokes and brushes. Even the period
Is a circle, not a casual dot, as if

There is something in every closure,
Every death.

After the funeral, after the hole
On the ground is filled

By a casket and the same earth,
Everyone goes home,

Which, to Li Bai, is dual.
He has a home fourteen hours behind,

Oceans apart, and another one
That now calls upon his black hair

And yellow skin. This home, where
Grandpa practices tai chi

Before the day dawns, is always his home.
Li Bai follows his aunts and uncles

To the village, hidden behind green
Fields. They show him grandpa’s

Room. On the desk, he finds copies
Of Tang poetry, dusted and tea-stained.

He flips the pages, filled with the old man’s
Translation, indelible.

This evening, fog blankets the hills,
The dogs too hungry to howl.

He reads the verse out loud, verbatim,
Hoping to revive fond memories

7.
Beforrre my bed
         therrre is brrright moonlight
so that it seems
         like frrrost on the grrround:

lifting my head
         I watch the brrright moon
lowerrring my head
         I drrream that I’m home.