"Lapses" was written more than two decades ago originally in Taiwanese Mandarin. Like most of Sun's poems, it reveals the vulnerability, loneliness and despair of a gay male speaker. The poem's title in its source language literally means "running out of solutions," probably in saving a romantic relationship. While the speaker's bewilderment is not directly told to readers until the last line ("We lost the magic of being kind"), the idea of absence ("solitude", "no one lives there" and "unacknowledged") throughout the poem provides a lyrical hint.
Nicholas Wong on "Lapses" |
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