"Cloth Birds" by Dorothy Tse

Translated by Natascha Bruce

Read and listen to the poem in its original Chinese.

There’s no cloth hawker in the bazaar
willing to make dirty deals
with the health inspector
neither will they confess the link
between those bolts of flyaway fabric
and ancient birds
(lo a sage appeared
drilled fire from sticks
transformed the stinking food
and the people were happy)
after the ban on cooking smoke
glug glug swallow
the secret of seawater and its fish
tile cities built up and pulled down
at four in the afternoon
a routine inspection
into the cleanliness of laughter
a hand spread wide in the dark is
splattered with light
a carambola tree sprouts branches from stumps
its remaining fruits sour and shrivelled to stardust
swaying in the void
the sky so dull
and the city official
at the newly-sterilized entrance
frantically gouging
a spy hole onto the blankness

About This Poem

“‘Cloth Birds’〈布鳥〉was written in 2018 for the Yen Chow Street Hawker Bazaar, one of the last fabric bazaars left in Hong Kong, which is under threat of closure by the government. I was invited to compose the poem by the artist Michael Leung and the calligrapher Jonathan Yu, who plan to collaborate with Yen Chow fabric sellers to print it onto handkerchiefs made from Yen Chow fabric. The project brings together fabric sellers and artists, aiming to raise awareness of the market’s vulnerability in an economically sustainable way.”
—Dorothy Tse

Dorothy Tse is the author of the short story collection Snow and Shadow (East Slope Publishing, 2014), translated by Nicky Harman. Co-founder of the literary magazine Fleurs des Lettres, she teaches at Hong Kong Baptist University and lives in Hong Kong.

Writing by Tse

Snow and Shadow

(Hong Kong University Press, 2014)

Natascha Bruce translates literature from Chinese. Her most recent work is Lake Like a Mirror, a collection of short stories by Ho Sok Fong, forthcoming from Two Lines Press. She lives in Santiago, Chile.

Translation by Bruce

Lake Like a Mirror

(Two Lines Press, 2020)

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September Guest Editor: Eduardo C. Corral

Thanks to Eduardo C. Corral, author of Guillotine (Graywolf Press, 2020), who curated Poem-a-Day for this month’s weekdays. Read a Q&A with Corral about his curatorial approach this month and find out more about our guest editors for the year.

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September 7, 2019

Cloth Birds

Dorothy Tse