Bell Peppers

Wong Leung-wo

I love green peppers fried with sliced pork. Sometimes I go to the market for 
               fresh green peppers. Some fulgent and firm; some, wrinkled like an
               old man, can't bear a simple touch.

Green peppers should belong to the hands.

Edward Weston's Pepper No.30. A black-and-white photo, yet
               sculpturesque. I think of Rodin, who said to perceive, one has to
               reach an object's soul. This green pepper looks like it is implanted in
               the nucleus of annular darkness. The uterus, for instance.

I see two naked human bodies, standing, embracing, twisted in the dark with
               a gleam of muscularity. One bends to bear the weight of the other,
               buttocks tightened.

He lies on his chest, lowers his head. He turns himself into a crane, neck
               extended, turned, gently touching its head, as if it were a way to
               comprehend existence.

I think time crowds their skulls. Bright, smooth, hard but sensitive, as if
               inside there were light, rocks and drifting streams.



translated from the Chinese by Nicholas Wong