Year of Rebels

Yangfan Lin

Your arrest is not shown on television
but all of us see it:
a swan’s eye
is a sun gilded in black.

A pond of swans
would be a glitch

When magnolia expands
into outer space: no, into the snow:
no, from a snowy distance, at

the turn of a silky creek
reflecting nothing but rocks.

Why mourn?
Now the region has little to give.
Birds, barely seen,
fold their seasoned feet.

But the tip of wings
brush over the inner side of eyelids
when the swan fights,
when we lie down
and choose sleep. Hard feathers—

I think I’ve known you
since the last century.
On television a man
burnt,
at the sight of which
all understood: he’s burning for us.
This is us.

Which means that the region
has always been like this.

Which means that
when you were crowned with
a ring of short-circuited tulips

—at birth, as if—
so were we.