Summer Time Change

Ahead of time trains depart

Girls precocious

Ahead of time candles are blown out

That adorn their birthday cakes

And in a well-schemed murder

A knife goes in white

And comes out red

All ahead of time

Yet chicks refuse to crack their shell

The moon fails to light the sky

At nightfall

Yet a realist writer jogging in the morning street

Has been killed by the first bus

Which was running off schedule

So black humour and the absurdist school

Can at last be understood

And the guy going for a date in the old place

At the old time has met another girl

The deceased—having just been cremated—

Has the wrong time listed on his certificate

And men stand bewildered over the theft

Of an hour of sun and air

Is time fair?

Written in 1989

Translated by Cao Sheng and David Axelrod