Caltrops
Zhou Mengdie

Hugging the bitter cold
and cruel heat of the Twelfth Month,
you sleep so soundly, so sweetly,
you, flock of daydreamers,
you, with smiles hanging forever
from your wingtips.

How much innocence
will be grabbed by the greed
of hand after hand?
Where a hot mist gently encircles, here
people are, cooking and selling
the corpses of bats!

Jacket after purple iron jacket
cut down; pair after pair of black
angels’ wings cut down;
daydreams petal by petal,
smiles crescent by crescent….

God, did you endow Darwin with tears?