Now you’re everywhere. I’ve known you for 50 years.
The fog on your face has lingered for 50 years.

No scrubber can clear up mysteries held so long.
In his room, Father wipes a mahogany box for 50 years.

That box came from Great-grandpa, gone in 1949.
He was an English major, a family tutor for 50 years,

until a patron made him a warden at No. 3 Suzhou Prison.
He didn’t know fate would smile on him after 50 years.

Great-grandpa ran his little prison
like a laundromat. He tortured no communists with 50-year

sentences, nor did he follow the Kuomintang.
Great-grandpa was neutral politically. For 50 years,

he dealt with the SVO structure, practiced calligraphy
on old newspapers. This could go on for another 50 years

but that’d be unnecessarily naive, your officials said, hoping
to change a country, revolutionize it in 50 years.

They liberated a village, a city, a country, and from that country
to this tiny prison, they altered one-by-one those 50-year-

old, thus reactionary, traditions, replacing even the doorknobs.
Fired on the spot, Great-grandpa was again looking for jobs. In 1950

he went down south, and disappeared. An ailing man,
he left us a few photos, and the jawline that, 50 years

later, was claimed by my father. He closed the door on me
when I asked about Great-grandpa, as if saying enough after 50 years,

get back to school in America and history should move on . . .
I understood that. He looked for Great-grandpa for 50 years

and searched through the provincial archives, but couldn’t find
even a death warrant, which would’ve allowed him to claim after 50 years

that Great-grandpa was a state enemy, that he was killed
for crimes he didn’t commit. But you, towering over us for 50 years

like an iron cloud, raining down nothing: in 1992, you decided to liberalize.
Give us food, wine, and shopping malls. We’ll forget your crimes in 50 years.