Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

Marilyn Mei Ling Chin’s "Tienanmen, The Aftermath" is a haunting meditation on memory, historical trauma, and the persistence of the past in the consciousness of the living. The poem evokes the ghosts of those lost in the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre, exploring both personal and collective grief while questioning the forces that determine fate, justice, and suffering. Through stark imagery and an unsettling dreamlike tone, Chin gives voice to the silenced, forcing the reader to confront the weight of history.

The poem opens with an unflinching depiction of violence: “There was blood and guts all over the road.” The bluntness of this statement, devoid of metaphor or embellishment, evokes the raw horror of Tiananmen Square, where student protestors were slaughtered by government forces. Yet, in the very next line, the speaker shifts inward, to an intimate plea: “I said I’m sorry, darling, and rolled over, / expecting the slate to be clean.” This line introduces guilt—whether personal or collective—as a central theme. The act of “rolling over” suggests a desire to move on, to forget, but history does not allow such easy absolution. The “she” who appears is both an individual and a symbol, a ghost of the massacre who refuses to be erased.

The ghostly figure is described as “she who was never alive became resurrected.” This paradox highlights the liminal state of the dead, particularly those denied proper mourning or recognition. The fact that she “thrives on the other side of the world” suggests the way memory persists across time and distance, how the exiled, the diaspora, and the descendants of those who suffered continue to carry the burden of history. The speaker feels her presence intimately: “walking in my soles as I walked, crying in my voice as I cried.” The blending of identities here is profound—the speaker becomes a vessel for the ghost, experiencing her pain as their own. This merging of self and lost other underscores the inescapable nature of historical trauma, the way it seeps into individual consciousness.

The next line—“When she arrived, I felt my knuckles in her knock, / her light looming over the city’s great hollows.”—further deepens this interconnection. The ghost’s knock is the speaker’s own; her “light” illuminates the void left by history’s erasures. The “city’s great hollows” could reference Beijing itself, emptied of its revolutionaries, or the figurative hollow spaces where memory and loss reside. The imagery suggests both presence and absence—the ghost is here, but only as an echo, an unresolved force haunting the present.

The second stanza shifts from the personal to a broader philosophical reflection: “Hope lies within another country’s semaphores.” This line suggests that the possibility of justice or change exists elsewhere, perhaps in the West, where symbols like “The Goddess of Liberty, the Statue of Mercy” stand. However, the next line—“we have it all wrong”—undermines this notion, suggesting that these ideals may be misplaced, misunderstood, or inadequate in the face of real suffering. The invocation of Zhuangzi, a Daoist philosopher known for his ideas on illusion and transformation, adds another layer of complexity: “how we choose to love, / how we choose to destroy, says Zhuangzi, is written in heaven.” This suggests a cosmic inevitability to human cruelty and compassion, a deterministic view that is both unsettling and strangely consoling.

The final lines return to the dead, urging mercy: “but leave the innocent ones alone, / those alive, yet stillborn, undead, yet waiting / in a fitful sleep undeserved of an awakening.” Here, Chin captures the liminality of those who perished at Tiananmen—their lives cut short before their potential could be realized (“alive, yet stillborn”), their memories existing in a restless state of unresolved mourning. The phrase “undeserved of an awakening” suggests that their fate is neither justice nor rebirth, but an eternal limbo. This closing sentiment carries a quiet devastation: even in memory, they remain unsettled, unable to find peace.

"Tienanmen, The Aftermath" is a poem of ghosts—both literal and metaphorical. Chin masterfully intertwines personal guilt, political history, and philosophical reflection, creating a piece that does not simply recount a tragedy but embodies its lingering presence. The poem resists closure, much like the event itself remains unresolved in Chinese history. In this way, it serves as both an elegy and an indictment, ensuring that the voices of the lost continue to be heard, even as the world tries to move on.

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