And you know
I only feel you through
The scent
Of the waveFinding the key
While touching the air
Soft odyssey
Delusive is the view
Parfum thérémine is a song that belongs to Shanghai’s gloomy, rainy days. It reminds me again of that night when I was writing poems for the people underground in the rocking of a train car. When the windows on both sides sank into shadow, sealing out all sound except the singing; when a city film drove into its winding low growl; and the people around me put on their masks, lodging a mute, mournful protest against this compulsory removal. Then the waves came surging from both sides of the car, a natural disaster encircling people who could not possibly be closer, yet the current repelled them from one another, injecting a buzzing interlude into the cabin.
This city needs a moment of instantaneous destruction, and this destruction must be a séance-like savage cut, shearing its original black order down to nothing but frayed edges and fragments of leaves, like the silhouette of a plane tree, like torn bark. Under the shelter of the tree, it seems every matter of life and death finds its reason.
That ice cube on the sticky drink reflected his pallid complexion. He was about to fall asleep, restlessly resisting the noise, the light, and the ever-approaching tomorrow. The building and the night fused into one body; glowing colored windows floated, scattered, beneath distant clouds, like heaven, or like ruins. I think this is the root note of this city: trembling, declining, stifled, forever circling the looping roads of the overpass.