Your seventeen Years

Two years after Tiananmen

I, alive
and with my share of infamy
have not the courage, nor the right
to come bearing flowers or words
before your seventeen-year-old smile

I know
seventeen years cannot hate or begrudge

And I have learned, from your seventeen years
that a life is a simple and unembellished thing
like a horizonless desert
requiring no water
requiring no adornment of tree or flower
to withstand the ravages of the sun

When your seventeen years collapsed upon the road
the road disappeared
your seventeen years rest peacefully as pages
between covers of mud
seventeen years in this world
yearn after nothing
but white, immaculate Age

When your seventeen years ceased to breathe,
miraculously they did not cease to hope
when bullets pierced the mountains
and the oceans writhed in pain
when all flowers became a single color
your seventeen years did not cease to hope
could not cease to hope
seventeen years of unfinished love
were returned to a white-haired mother

The mother who kept your seventeen years
locked up at home
the mother who beneath a five-starred flag
severed the ties of noble blood
which bound her own family
woke when you fixed her with your final gaze
bearing your seventeen-year-old bequest
she has crossed and recrossed every graveyard

every time she was about to fall
the spectral breath of a seventeen-year-old
propped her up
and sent her on her way

Surpassing age
surpassing death
your seventeen years
will last forever

Excerpt by No Enemies, No Hatred
Liu Xiaobo

中國不需要做三百年的殖民地，中國自古以來就是殖民地。