Bell Peppers

Wong Leung-wo

I love green peppers fried with sliced pork. Sometimes I go to the market for 
               fresh green peppers. Some fulgent and firm; some, wrinkled like an 
               old man, can't bear a simple touch.

Green peppers should belong to the hands.

Edward Weston's Pepper No.30. A black-and-white photo, yet 
               sculpturesque. I think 	of Rodin, who said to perceive, one has to 
               reach an object's soul. This green pepper looks like it is implanted in 
               the nucleus of annular darkness. The uterus, for instance.

I see two naked human bodies, standing, embracing, twisted in the dark with 
               a gleam of muscularity. One bends to bear the weight of the other, 
               buttocks tightened.

He lies on his chest, lowers his head. He turns himself into a crane, neck 
               extended, turned, gently touching its head, as if it were a way to 
               comprehend existence.

I think time crowds their skulls. Bright, smooth, hard but sensitive, as if 
               inside there were light, rocks and drifting streams.



translated from the Chinese by Nicholas Wong

Read the original in Chinese, Traditional

Listen to the poem read in the Cantonese by the author:

Wong Leung-wo is an Associate Professor in the Department of Literature of Cultural Studies at the Hong Kong Institute of Education. He is a two-time winner of the Hong Kong Biennial Award for Chinese Literature (poetry and fiction). Wong is also the author a number of Chinese poetry collections, novels, essays, and works of literary criticism.

Nicholas Wong holds an M.F.A. from City University of Hong Kong, and is the author of Crevasse (Kaya Press, 2015). Based in Hong Kong, he is an assistant poetry editor for Drunken Boat.