At dusk in a foreign land
Travelers think the sunset is baked on the tip of a knife.
A bloody piece of beef, an imperceptible smile.
Here, the poet compares the sunset to "beef with blood". On a new day:
Dawn is advancing.
A coffin in lipstick.
Bury the bodies of the night.
Here, the poet uses "coffin" and "corpse" to render the horror of dawn. For a poet like Gu Ma, the standardization of poetic language has been an important feature of poetic language since 1990s.