诗四首

Ye Hui is a poet of a rare kind. He lives in the same countryside where he was born and raised, and his writing keeps growing from the same rain and clouds. One could compare him to the Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa, as Ye clerks in a taxation office, daydreaming of the contemporaneousness of all ages and countries. Unlike Pessoa, his alter egos exist in the real world. An architect bred of poetry, he built his own spacious house and sits out his free hours in a tiny room, “rioting through the wild,” pouring out one poetry collection every ten years. Ye is arguably the only metaphysical poet in China, as he weaves metaphysics into real-life snapshots and creates compelling collages of contemporary myths and mysteries. A local candy shop becomes a “warm flow” of seething imagination. The terror of “our two hands” on the butcher’s table shifts to a mirror-image of the self “unfurling by the window” as snow falls. Anything can happen and does happen in a Ye Hui poem. Even dead leaves can give “all the directions.” His is a poetry that “falls like showers,” with and release of energy that gives everything a new rinse and shine. No wonder he named his house “the villa of showers.” These four poems serve as a warm welcome.