Life-Long Undercover

What planet are you from, stranger?
You have an outer-space violin in your left ear
that plays a string of quiet clouds
in the noisy subway.
I suspected it, and others, too, suspected it
and, true: you have a strange device on your retina
that can always catch the small ads falling from the sky
through the windy air down to the streets.
Even the sleeping fats in your body are suspiciously
beautiful.
I worry that one day you will
wing your way back to that other planet with the potato chips
that are left in your hands decorating your big wings.
And I will be left here alone trying to decipher
your space diary written in snow.
I worry. I always worry.
Fortunately: I’ve snapped a wavelength of your planet
by pulling out a poetic antenna
in the back of my head
while you are cooking in the kitchen.
You are cooking again, this morning.
A little voice of alien vowels issues an order
to the woodpecker
five meters
from our balcony: Let her stay there
as our life-long
undercover
at his side, do not try to wake her up!

~Hu Xudong