Lobsters—Love Across Species in a Prosperous Age

Literary Review, Summer, 2004 by Yip Fai

Lobsters
--Love Across Species in a Prosperous Age

   You always rely on your taciturnity and air bubbles
   To dilute trendy love and desires
   You always sink to the bottom in cold arrogance
   To blend quietly with the burning passions of a prosperous age

   Tortoise spectacles, crocodile belts
   Banqueting men and women elegantly dressed
   Ribbons, bow ties and swallow tails
   Demonstrating to foreign tribes propriety and impropriety

   The exoticism of trendy fashions
   At times fits perfectly into the gourmet scene
   At times strains the laws on polite eating and drinking
   Resisting in silence their silent constraints

   The sense of taste has tamed into the sense of sight
   Species of different origins
   Are engaged in meta-discourse
   Deconstructing the theme across the water tank

   An autumn for the eyes ears tongue nose and throat
   Hails from afar the appetite of summer
   The caress of garlic cheese and broth
   The sizzling and torture of the shell and the meat

   South of the throat and chest cannot suppress
   The instinct north of the knees and legs
   Primitive desires panting
   Climb the ladder hanging down from heaven

   We size up the accessories on each other's outfits
   Wondering what tricks they harbour
   What underwear they allude to
   What rhetoric they reveal

   You are my Issey Miyake
   An asymmetrical whirl-around wrap
   I am your Master Chef Chan Dong
   Countering the trend with ancient recipes

Editor's Note: Yip Fai's poems were originally published in Dialogue Through Poetry Anthology, 2001. Published electronically by the Dialogue Through Poetry Organization.

Translated from the Chinese by Martha P.Y. Cheung