what has poetry got to do with my iphone

Guo Jinniu was born half a century ago somewhere in rural China. Jinniu means golden bull or maybe golden ox, excuse my ignorance. Like so many before him and since, he eventually found his way to one of the new cities, Shenzhen, where he worked on an assembly line making mobile phones, 17 hours every day. 

Someone like me is not allowed to live the life I secretly long for. But I can write what my inner voice tells me to.

Today, he lives with his wife and two children in a windowless room, 12 sqm. The family owns exactly one book, Selected Poems in World Literature. He no longer works at the assembly line, he now works for the local authorities registering the streams of migrant workers. All this I read in one of our daily national papers. 

Guo Jinniu is a poet. This is one of his poems. It just won the International Chinese Poetry Award.

I shy away from translating the German version and find this on an obscure Chinese site:

Gone Home on Paper

1. 

The teenager on a dark morning counts from 1st floor to 13th 

by the time he gets there, he’s on the roof. 

Him.

Fly, fly. The motions of birds, inimitable. 

The teenager draws a straight line, immediately 

a line of lightning

could only see the nearer half.

The Earth, a little larger than Longhua Town, rolls up to meet him

Speed  carried the teenager off;  rice carried off a minuscule white.

 

2. 
Mother’s tears jump from the tiles’ edges.

This is the 13th jump in six months. In the past, those twelve names

dusts just settled. 

All night autumn wind runs through Mother’s pearly everlasting

His whited ashes, frail whites  heading home on the train

he’s unconcerned with rice white   pearly everlasting white

Mother’s white

Frostfall’s.

Such an enormous white buries a minuscule white

like Mother burying her daughter.

 

3. 
On the 13th floor, a suicide net is closing up

this is my job

in order to make a day’s pay

I gradually turn down a screw counter-sink it clockwise

it struggles and fights me in the dark

the harder I push, the greater the danger

 

Rice lips of fresh water, tiny dimples hide two drops of dew, she is still worrying

Autumn loses

one set of clothes a day

My friend gone home on paper, besides rice,  your fiancée,

rarely does anyone recall that in Room 701 of this building, 

you occupied a bunk,

ate Dongguan rice noodles. 

Someone jumps. From the roof of a factory. He wanted a better life and he came to this city. These jumps are reality. I think,  it was 18 young workers, within the span of a few months in 2010. From the roof of foxcon where the iphones come from, our wii, our xboxes, the biggest electronics manufacturer in the world. I read on: 

We are kept like robots, not allowed to speak, for 12 long hours. If you need to use the toilet you have to apply for a number. I fixed the net. Nobody is allowed to jump anymore.

Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times in today's China.