Tiger Year Epiphanies
1
The tiger year begins when the tiger arrives—as a word.
A tiger sleeps in a child’s zoo—as a wild animal.
What if you fed a mewling cat like a roaring tiger?
Without tigers, we don’t often see monks sacrificing themselves to feed them.
2
It is difficult but not impossible to distinguish between a crow’s droppings and other birds’.
It is, however, almost impossible to weigh out a gentleman’s gold from a robber’s.
It takes an epiphany to move me from my own indifference into another’s unease.
Every sound I make is one I ought to be making.
3
Pissing has become poetic:
Someone has written about pissing in the wilderness.
Diarrhoea, however, is not yet poetic:
Having diarrhoea in the wilderness is not okay.
4
It’s embarrassing to be shedding tears over a sad story that’s not uncommon.
But the sunlight doesn’t care, and neither do the trees.
The sunlight has no self, it illuminates the earth unthinkingly.
The trees grow toward immortality, they long ago gave up base pleasures.
5
Sweep the floor: something is approaching.
Do the laundry: something is approaching.
What is it? I do not know.
You think something is something; it never is.
2 February 2022
About the translators
Austin Woerner is a Creative Fellow in Chinese-English literary translation at the University of Leeds.
Morty Shiqi Zhang is an MA student currently enrolled in the English Literature course at the School of English, University of Leeds.