Aching For Your Pain (Yan Li) Poem by Denis Mair

by Yan Li
(translated by D Mair)

I've never set foot in medical school
Don't ask what I'd look like in a white lab coat
You could call me an underground practitioner
But only the "underground" part would really fit
There were years back then
When poems scorched by the one mighty sun
Kept cool with me in subterranean shade
But be that as it may
What I want you to know is
I am aching for your pain

Life is on its own as the century turns
To scenes of business spreading worldwide
But I flip to the page for reading each other
Where individual wounds
Join forces in ideal forms of pain
How I wish for devices of cinema
To unreel our diagnosis on the screen
Not presuming we will walk out cured
But joining in the pain with different body parts
And so I say
To the human race
Only your wound is huge enough
For the pain I ache to express