Cover art by Katie Morton
Spittoon is proud to present three poems and one track off The Last Tribe on Earth, the debut album of poet-musician duo Anthony Tao (poetry) and Liane Halton (classical guitar). This collaboration was born of Spittoon’s event series Spittunes, in which poets and musicians are matched together for innovative live performances. Tao and Halton refined and expanded their collaboration into this beautiful nine-track album and chapbook. To celebrate the album, here are three of the original poems by Tao and one of our favorite tracks.
Please support the artists and Beijing’s independent arts scene by purchasing the digital album here. And don’t miss the album release on Sunday, March 24, at 6 pm at the Bookworm in Beijing as part of the Bookworm Literary Festival. Tickets here. Hardcopies of the chapbook (with a music download link included) will be available at the Bookworm—or buy from Tao directly (WeChat ID: anthonytao13)
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Kangding
After “Kangding Love Song,” a famous Chinese folk song. The Chinese words are from the song, and the italicized portions are translations of the Chinese lyrics.
On the sunside of rock and stone
sits the town of Kangding,
ancient as song and change.
On the shadowside of thunder,
woodcutters and cooks watch
dragonflies and phoenix,
ghosts and frost, maidens high
up on the clouds beneath mountain cover.
When they look down you just might die.
Let others recite their encyclicals
while we chase flanks of smoke falling
on jade and willow, cassia and prayer.
Let us recall winter plums in gauze windows,
toast the spring’s solitary moon,
and hope again to meet in dream,
water unburdened by reflection,
phantoms unbothered by light,
love untethered to tradition.
Let us run, cohere to sun,
twirl in rays of melting rain
against the sod and slope of Kangding.
Let us swoon, cohere to moon,
sink into beds of pine among shine, listening
for kingfisher and drake, wind and dawn, singing —
Lovely maid with a smile so sweet
Li the woodcutter’s daughter
Zhang the blacksmith’s eldest’s son
came through moonlight to court her
Moonlight shines bright
came through moonlight to court her
Let us run, cohere to sun,
let us swoon, cohere to moon,
twirl in rays of melting rain,
sing of all that might not change —
Lovely maidens of the world
世間溜溜的女子
I cannot but love you
任我溜溜的愛喲
Gentlemen folk of the world
世間溜溜的男子
They cannot but woo you
任你溜溜的求喲
in the hills of Kangding
月亮彎彎
in the vales of Kangding
in the watchful evergreens
and purple starlit dreams
in the moonlight cresting over Kangding
in the moon’s dharma over Kangding
in the stars and moons shining
in the stars and moons that shine
On Listening to Hai Zi
After Hai Zi’s “September,” as sung by Zhou Yunpeng.
Hai Zi is a Chinese poet who killed himself in 1989.
Gods died on these grasslands. The flowers
covering their bodies rightly flourish
and prosperously rot, returning life
to its proper place. It is not so far afield
after all, not so impossible as those melodies
sung on horse-haired instruments
in the lonely plains where we cannot go.
Hai Zi was still young when he laid his body
across railroad tracks and waited
to feel the concussion between words;
those of his generation would learn good sense
sometimes has the sense to leave all abandoned.
This was before they fled the bullets.
The blind singer Zhou Yunpeng understands
the cataclysm in that song
on horse-haired instruments in the lonely plains
where we cannot go. He says there are no tears…
well, call me a fool — if these aren’t tears
then I’ll return the sorghum liquor to its bottle
and the bottle to the mud, and the grass in the air
that pricks my nose and burns my tongue
I’ll return to the field of the dead gods
who are so far away that far cannot comprehend,
where wildflowers, facing the sea, sway in the wind.
Mid-Autumn Blood Moon
We cowered under cold and cassia wine,
Certain conversations untouched across the dinner table,
Hazarding to ascend with offers of cockscomb
Or descend into that garden where women can ask
Flowers to prophesy the number and sex of their children.
God or demon, will you anchor or steer?
In the morning on the day after the last sun
I could not say what horns sounded from toad kings’ throats
Or faces lifted off the sand with scars burnished by change,
Just that
The empurpling horizon teetered across a central pillar
As a great fight raged with archers’ stars and the broad sword of wind.
Just that
The empurpling horizon teetered across a central pillar
As a great fight raged with archers’ stars and the broad sword of wind.
In after-sun on morning of last day
Could I not say what sounds off kings and toads
Lift burnished faces sanded by scars,
The pilloried, teetering, just,
Purpled across changed horizon
As archers and stars with wind and sword fight a broad rage.
Pilloried, purple, teetering
Stars with sword and wind fight broad rage
Would it tip toward the future, depositing us on rock, huddled and together?
Or, with the creep of shadow over an unbent Immortal, would it fall
The other side, causing us to slide like mud
Flush into gully
As rain?
Anthony Tao is a writer and editor in Beijing. His poetry has appeared in publications such as The Cortland Review, Prairie Schooner, Borderlands, Kartika Review, Frontier, Asian Cha, and more. He is currently the managing editor of SupChina, and he formerly coordinated the 9th and 10th editions of the Bookworm Literary Festival. Follow him on Twitter @anthonytao
Liane Halton began her guitar studies at the age of ten and graduated from Rhodes University in South Africa in classical guitar performance and composition. She is active in the South Africa and Beijing music scenes, having performed her own solo compositions as well as in bands of numerous styles, including pop, surf, punk, and noise.