"Half-Poems" [by Yu Xiang]

Half-Poems

I like writing half poems
that I know I will never finish.
A finished poem
can't ease a death or
quicken a life
and I wonder why
I still try
to write poems
and finish them.
A finished poem
belongs to anyone who reads it,
people you know or don't know,
people who love you,
people you dislike.

My half-poems belong to myself alone.

-- Yu Xiang (born 1970)

translated from the Chinese by Fan Jinghua and David Lehman