Un Sio San
The Artichoke
Translated from the Chinese by Bonnie Huie
Woman is not the progenitor
but rather, the thing diminished.
Don’t believe me? Behold the parable of the artichoke.
One’s downfall could well be ravishing beauty, or a longing for home
In my student days at Toronto
I’d buy artichokes all the time
boiled or deep fried
bursting with succulent ripeness
a world so tender, yet so prickly
a thorn-encrusted globe to be navigated
with patience, past wedge upon wedge
until at long last, one arrives at the delectable feast
intended for private gratification—
Woman was not created for the sole purpose of marriage.
Like an independence movement
Like the purity of the sacred lotus flower
Like an anti-intellectual place called home
Like all self-perpetuating myths
One has a social responsibility to rise to the challenge.
To be born and to become human, that is the fifth modernization.
No flower spares a single grain of pollen.
No fish would ever be so content as to be carried by the current.