{"id":5579,"date":"2010-12-28T10:13:29","date_gmt":"2010-12-28T14:13:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/?p=5579"},"modified":"2010-12-28T10:16:19","modified_gmt":"2010-12-28T14:16:19","slug":"liu-xiabobo-55","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/liu-xiabobo-55\/","title":{"rendered":"Liu Xiabobo @ 55"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Today is Chinese poet, writer, activist and Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiabobo<\/strong>‘s 55th birthday, which he ‘celebrates’ in jail. Below a poem of his written 9 April 1999, reprinted today in the German newspaper Tageszeitung<\/a> in a German translation by Martin Winter, on which I base my version.<\/p>\n

\n

Wait for me with the Dust<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n

(For my wife, who is waiting for me)<\/em><\/p>\n

There\u2019s nothing left for you to do
\nbut wait for me with the dust.
\nLayer by layer
\nit fills the corners.
\nYou keep the curtains closed.
\nThe sun shall not disturb the dust.<\/p>\n

On the bookshelves the signs are vanishing in dust,
\nthe patterns in the carpet are gorged with dust.
\nWhen you write to me
\nyou like to dip the pen in\u00a0 dust,
\nits particles then prick my eyes.<\/p>\n

You sit there all day long
\nand don\u2019t want to move,
\nafraid your feet could hurt the dust.
\nBreathing very quietly
\nyou write a story with your silence
\nin these suffocating times.
\nOnly\u00a0 dust is still faithful to you.<\/p>\n

Dust fills
\nyour gaze, your breath, your time.
\nIn your soul
\nit builds a grave day by day,
\ninch by inch,
\nstarting at your feet it
\nreaches chest and throat.<\/p>\n

You know that the grave
\nis your best refuge.
\nNobody bothers you
\nif you wait for me there.<\/p>\n

You obviously have a special relation to dust
\nin the darkness in the suffocating stillness,
\nwait, please wait for me.<\/p>\n

Wait for me with the dust,
\nrefuse the sun, the flow of air,
\nuntil the dust buries you completely.
\nFall asleep in the dust
\nuntil you wake up
\nwhen I\u2019ll have returned,
\nyou\u2019ll wipe the dust from your skin, from your soul
\nand you’ll stand up, like a miracle.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today is Chinese poet, writer, activist and Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiabobo‘s 55th birthday, which he ‘celebrates’ in jail. Below a poem of his written 9 April 1999, reprinted today in the German...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47,52,55,91,103],"tags":[910],"class_list":["post-5579","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-freedom-of-speech","category-human-rights","category-intellectuals","category-poetry","category-translation","tag-liu-xiabobo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5579","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5579"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5579\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5584,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5579\/revisions\/5584"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5579"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5579"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5579"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}