<html aria-label="message body"><head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=us-ascii"></head><body style="overflow-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;"><div dir="auto" style="overflow-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;"><font size="5"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">The Negative</span><br><br><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">A man hauling coal in the street is stilled forever.</span><br><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">Inside a temple, instead of light</span><br><br><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">a slow shutter lets the darkness in.</span><br><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">I see a rat turn a corner running from a man with a chair trying to smash it,</span><br><br><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">see people sleeping at midnight in a Wuhan street on bamboo beds,</span><br><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">a dead pig floating, bloated, on water.</span><br><br><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">I see a photograph of a son smiling who two years ago fell off a cliff</span><br><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">and his photograph is in each room of the apartment.</span><br><br><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">I meet a woman who had smallpox as a child, was abandoned by her mother</span><br><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">but who lived, now has two daughters, a son, a son-in-law;</span><br><br><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">they live in three rooms and watch a color television.</span><br><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">I see a man in blue work clothes whose father was a peasant</span><br><br><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">who joined the Communist party early but by the time of the Cultural Revolution</span><br><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">had risen in rank and become a target of the Red Guards.</span><br><br><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">I see a woman who tried to kill herself with an acupuncture needle</span><br><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">but instead hit a vital point and cured her chronic asthma.</span><br><br><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">A Chinese poet argues that the fundamental difference between East and West</span><br><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">is that in the East an individual does not believe himself</span><br><br><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">in control of his fate but yields to it.</span><br><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">As a negative reverses light and dark</span><br><br><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">these words are prose accounts of personal tragedy becoming metaphor,</span><br><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">an emulsion of silver salts sensitive to light,</span><br><br><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">laughter in the underground bomb shelter converted into a movie theater,</span><br><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">lovers in the Summer Palace park.</span></font><div><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><font size="5"><br></font></span></div><div><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><font size="5"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>- Arthur Sze</font></span></div></div></body></html>