Translated by Jeffrey Yang, recipient of the 2009 PEN/Osterweil Award for Poetry.

“One Letter is Enough,” “Longing to Escape,” and “Daybreak” are new poems from Liu Xiaobo, who received the 2009 PEN/ Barbara Goldsmith Freedom to Write Award. They appear in PEN America 11: Make Believe.

LISTEN | Download the mp3

Readings from Writers Rally for Release of Liu Xiaobo

Daybreak • Longing to Escape • One Letter 

One Letter Is Enough for Xia one letter is enough for me to transcend and face you to speak as the wind blows past the night uses its own blood to write a secret verse that reminds me each word is the last word the ice in your body melts into a myth of fire in the eyes of the executioner fury turns to stone two sets of iron rails unexpectedly overlap moths flap toward lamp light, an eternal sign that traces your shadow                 8. 1. 2000       Longing to Escape for my wife abandon the imagined martyrs I long to lie at your feet, besides being tied to death this is my one duty when the heart’s mirror- clear, an enduring happiness   your toes will not break a cat closes in behind you, I want to shoo him away as he turns his head, extends a sharp claw toward me deep within his blue eyes there seems to be a prison if I blindly step out of with even the slightest step I’d turn into a fish                 8. 12. 1999    Daybreak for Xia over the tall ashen wall, between the sound of vegetables being chopped daybreak’s bound, severed, dissipated by a paralysis of spirit what is the difference between the light and the darkness that seems to surface through my eyes’ apertures, from my seat of rust I can’t tell if it’s the glint of chains in the cell, or the god of nature behind the wall daily dissidence makes the arrogant sun stunned to no end   daybreak a vast emptiness you in a far place with nights of love stored away                 6. 30. 1997

Copyright © 2009 by Liu Xiaobo. English translation copyright © 2009 by Jeffery Yang. All rights reserved.