Don’t Cry, Tai Lake

verdant hill. He ended up near the fence door at the back, though he had come here by a different route last time. As before, no one was there. He sat on a slab of rock, looking out over the shimmering expanse of water.
    It’s not the lake, but the moment / the lake comes flowing into your eyes  …
    He was thinking of her again, but that afternoon, he started to realize what a battle she had been fighting in her efforts to protect the environment.
    Just like those people at the banquet, Liu and the others must have been putting a lot pressure on her.
    From the overpass full of sound and fury,
    you may see time is like water
    covered with all the dirty algae,
    empty cans, plastic bottles.
    Water has so many delusions,
    cunning currents that deceive
    with whispering ambitions and vanities.
    If you are lost in the revelries
    of a solitary green reed in the wind,
    the water flows away, leaving you behind.
    The lake has so many exits,
    once lost, you can never find your way back.
    After so many years, you still don’t know
    how the water flows?
     
    Don’t forget what’s really important
    in a tiny blue test tube.
    Virtues are forced upon you
    by the tears shaken from the forbidden tree.
     
    The siren, coming from afar,
    shouted in terror through the murky mist …
    He was again surprised by the voice in the lines, apparently one of mighty authority, like Liu and his people, speaking out to Shanshan, though the persona here was also more of a collective one—not necessarily in Wuxi, nor just by Tai Lake. But that voice might work for an ambitious multivoice, multiperspective poem—along with the lines he had dashed off earlier that morning.
    With that thought he turned and made his way toward the gate.

NINE
    AS BEFORE, HE TOOK the small quaint road and turned to the right, instead of going into the park. Sometimes, walking helped him think, especially along a quiet road.
    That afternoon, the road was still quiet, but there was something he hadn’t noticed before. At the intersection before the small square, he saw a road sign indicating the direction to the Party School of Zhejiang Province. The school, though not in the park itself, was nonetheless in the same scenic area. A black Mercedes sped along in that direction, honking and kicking up a cloud of dust behind it.
    Further along, a tourist attraction sign pointed to a bamboo pavilion partially visible up the hill in the woods. He might have seen an indication of the attraction on the tourist map, something with a poetic name, but that afternoon he was not in a tourist frame of mind.
    Soon he arrived at the small square, but he didn’t turn in the direction of Uncle Wang’s place. He plodded on, thinking once again about the case.
    Sergeant Huang alone couldn’t help that much, in spite of all the efforts he’d been making. But Chen knew nobody else in the city except for Shanshan, to whom he was still unwilling to reveal that he was a detective. No, a sudden revelation like that would be too dramatic for their relationship. She wouldn’t speak as freely to him if she knew he was a cop, of that much he was sure.
    He came upon a small pub at the corner of a narrow street. The pub was a simple and shabby one, where customers might have a cup or two with a cheap dish or no dish at all, probably like the old-fashioned tavern in a story by Lu Xun. There were also a couple of rough wooden tables with wooden benches outside.
    At one table sat two middle-aged men, hunched with nothing but a bottle of Erguotou between them, drinking determinedly in the middle of the day. Possibly they were two alcoholics already lost in a world of their own, Chen reflected, but he slowed down when he heard something like a drinking game between the two, each saying a sentence of repartee in response to the other, one after the other in quick succession.
    “From a fairy tale told to our children long, long ago, the sky was blue—”
    “The water was clear—”
    “The fish and shrimp were edible—”
    “The air was fresh—”
    “From a fairy tale told to our children long, long ago … now I drink the cup—”
    It was almost like the linked verse, a game among classical Chinese poets. The line “From a fairy tale told to our children long, long ago” sounded like a refrain. The participant could repeat it after every four or five lines, perhaps as an excuse to gain a breath. The one who failed to say a parallel line similar in content or in syntax lost the round and