The night gave me black eyes,
I use it to find the light.
There are only two sentences in the whole poem, and the images in the poem are very common phenomena: night, eyes and light. Two novel combinations, seemingly contradictory turning points, contain wonderful rationality.
This contradictory logic is the essence of these two short poems. This contradiction is on two levels.
The first level is that the presentation of images in poetry is opposite to that in people's daily experience. This mainly focuses on the image of the eyes. In the dark, the eyes are the only light. In people's experience, the eyes are always a symbol of transparency, but the eyes in the poem are "black eyes". This is the feeling in the poet's heart and the poet's profound reflection.
The second level of contradiction is the internal contradiction of poetry. This focuses on the image of "light". In such an era, such an environment, such a deep night, poets should look for light. The poet looked for light with his black eyes. This is the horn that poets use to resist the night. This level is also the theme of this poem: the poet should not only reflect on the dark past, pour out the pain in his heart, but also look for it.
Therefore, the poet gave this poem with only two sentences a grand and intriguing title: a generation. But the content of the poem seems to point to two generations: it is not only a summary and reflection of the previous generation, but also a call and guidance for the next generation. It expresses the poet's denial of dark politics and his yearning and pursuit of light.