The Planets of the Supreme Ultimate
“My dear, I had never thought …”
that leech-like tongue of yours
has already sucked in my words, and
entered the deep recessof my body
to excavate the unspoken gatha of my love.

Our externality is the urban camouflage
of decadence all too plain of the fin-de –sièle,
but the implication of the flesh
has degenerated into a volcanic period of primitive desires.
Soul is a subiect of metaphysics;
but you and I, composed of flesh and blood,
are another kind of microcosm where
the five elements are at work.

You don’t want me to keep on speculating
and nest of ants to dissolve with their saliva
the sweet words and honeyed phrases I stored up in life.

when Adam licked Eve’s body for the first time
surely, too, eh knew the truth;
the most passionate collision of planets
is nothing other than a man and a woman
dangerously and sweetly dovetailed yin with yang.

[Translators’ note : The poet evidently refers to the Diagram of the Supreme Ultimate, composed by the philosopher Zhou Dunyi (1017-73), by which Zhou attributed the production of the universe to the working of the five elements, derived the five elements from the alternation of yin and yang, and explained yin and yang as the alternating quiescence and movement of the Supreme Ultimate. See Derk Bodde, trans. A History of the Chinese Philosophy, by Fung Yu-lan, Vol.2 (Princeton University Press, 1953), pp.435 ff.]

selected from the special issue in “Nüren de hupo: Tai-wan nüxing wenxue yü wenhua” (II) [Women and Lakes: Women’s Literature and Culture in Taiwan]. Chung-wai Wen-hsüeh [Chinese-Foreign Literature Monthly], No. 313, June 1998, pp. 152-54.