The Anchor Book of Chinese Poetry
Page 41
Brocade dresses and ribbons toss up in the breeze
and brush dust from the stone steps
A shadow of a tramp slinks past the wall
colorful neon lights glow for him
but deprive him of sleep all through the night
A stray cat jumps on a bench
watching a trembling mist of floating light
But a mercury lamp rudely opens window curtains
to peer at the privacy of others
disturbing lonely people and their dreams
Behind a small door
a hand quietly draws the catch
as if pulling a gun bolt
Translated by Tony Barnstone and
Newton Liu
Ordinary Days
Lock secrets in a drawer
write notes in my favorite book
put a letter in the mailbox and stand silent awhile
gazing after passersby in the wind, worry about nothing
eyes caught by a shop window's neon flash
insert a coin into a pay phone
bum a cigarette from an old man fishing under a bridge
from a river steamer a vast empty foghorn
stare at myself in a dim full-length mirror
in the smoke of a cinema entrance
as window curtains muffle the noisy sea of stars
open some faded photos and letters under the lamplight
Translated by Tony Barnstone and
Newton Liu
Country Night
The sunset and distant mountains
interleaf a crescent moon
moving in the elm woods
an empty bird nest
a small trail encircles the pond
chasing a dog with a dirty coat
then runs into the mud wall at the end of the village
hanging bucket swaying lazily over a well
a bell as silent
as the stone roller in the yard
scattered uneasy wheat stalks
the chewing noise in a horse stall
is redolent with threat
someone's long shadow
slips across the stone doorsteps
firelight from a kitchen range
casts a red glow on a woman's arms
and a chipped earthenware basin
Translated by Tony Barnstone and
Newton Liu
A Decade
Over this forgotten land
years entangled with bells on the bridles of horses
rang out until dawn, and on the road harsh panting
under a heavy burden turned into a song
sung by people everywhere.
A woman's necklace lifted into the night sky
to the sound of incantation as if responding to a calling
and the lascivious fluorescent dial struck at random.
Time is honest as a wrought-iron fence;
only the wind sheared by withered branches
can get in or out.
Flowers that blossom only in the eternal prison
of a book become the concubines of truth,
but the lamp that burst yesterday
is so incandescent in a blind man's heart
right to the instant he is shot down
that a picture of the assassin is captured
in his suddenly open eyes.
Translated by Tony Barnstone and
Newton Liu
Response
The base make a safe-conduct pass of their own baseness,
while honest men's honor is their epitaph.
Look—the gold-plated sky is brimming
with drifting reflections of the dead.
If the Ice Age is long over
why does everything hang with icicles?
The Cape of Good Hope has been found long ago,
so why do sails still contend in the Dead Sea?
I came to this world with nothing but paper,
rope, and my own shadow
to speak for the condemned
before sentencing:
Listen to me, world,
I—don't—believe!
You've piled a thousand enemies at your feet.
Count me as a thousand and one.
I don't believe the sky is blue.
I don't believe in echoing thunder.
I don't believe dreams are just fantasy,
that there is no revenge after death.
If the ocean must burst through the seawall,
let its bitter water irrigate my heart.
If the continents are destined to pile up,
let us choose the mountain peaks as our hermitage.
Glittering stars and new spinning events
pierce the naked sky,
like pictographs five thousand years old,
like the coming generation's watching eyes.
Translated by Tony Barnstone and Newton Liu
A Step
The pagoda's shadow on the grass is a pointer
sometimes marking you, sometimes me
we are just a step apart
separation or reunion, this is a repeating
theme: hatred is only one step away
the sky sways on a foundation of fear
a building with windows open in all directions
we live inside
or outside of it: death just one step away
children have learned how to talk to the wall
this city's history is sealed in an old man's
heart: decrepitude is just a step away
Translated by Tony Barnstone and
Newton Liu
Elegy
With thin tears a widow worships an idol
while a pack of newborn hungry wolves waits to be fed
barely alive, they escape the world one by one
my howls echo through the stretching mountains
together we circled the state farm
from which you came, when cooking smoke twined into the sky
and crowns of wild chrysanthemums floated on the wind
thrusting out your slight firm breasts
you came to me in a field
where stone outcrops drown in passionate wheat
now you are that widow and I
am what's been lost, with beauty, life, desire
how we lay together in heavy sweat
how our bed drifted on the morning river
Translated by Tony Barnstone and
Newton Liu
Nightmare
On the unpredictable winds
I painted an eye
the moment frozen then gone
but no one woke up
the nightmare kept right on into the light of day
flooding through streambeds, crawling across cobblestones
increasing in presence and pressure
among branches, along the eaves
the birds' terrified eyes froze
fell out
over cart tracks in the road
a crust of frost formed
no one woke up
Translated by James A. Wilson
Many Years
This is you, this is
driven-mad-by-magic-shadows-whirling you,
first clear then cloudy
I won't go to you again
the bitter cold also deprives me of hope
many years, before the icebergs formed
fish would float to the water's face
then sink away, many years
the reverent wing beats of my heart
bear me gently through the drifting night
lamplight breaks upon steel beams
many years, silent and alone
here there are no clocks in the rooms
when people left they also took
the keys, many years
within thick fog, a whistle blasts
from a fast train over a bridge
season after season
set out from small railway sta
tions among the fields
linger at each tree
the open flowers bear fruit, many years
Translated by James A. Wilson
Sweet Tangerines
Sweet tangerines
flooded with sun, sweet tangerines
let me move through your hearts
bearing burdens of love
sweet tangerines
rinds breaking with delicate rains
let me move through your hearts
worries turned to tears of relief
sweet tangerines
bitter nets keep each fleshy piece
let me move through your hearts
as I wander in the wreckage of dreams
sweet tangerines
flooded with sun, sweet tangerines
Translated by James A. Wilson
A Formal Declaration
Maybe these are the last days
I haven't put aside a will
just a pen, for my mother
I'm hardly a hero
in times with no heroes
I'll just be a man
The calm horizon
divides the ranks of living and dead
I align myself with the sky
no way will I kneel
to state assassins
who lock up the winds of freedom
The star holes of bullets
bleed in the black-bright dawn
Translated by James A. Wilson
Ancient Monastery
With bell sounds gone
the spider webs weave in the cracks of pillars
wrap around the same rings with each turning year
Nothing to remember, stones
empty mist in mountain valleys blends with the echoes
of stones, nothing to remember
when narrow trails wound through this weaving
dragons and weird birds would make their ways
along the temple eaves bearing the silence of bells
Wild grass in a year's time
flourishes indiscriminately,
doesn't care if it bends beneath
a monk's cloth shoe or the wind
Stone relics are worn and pocked, their writings long ruined
as when great flames ravage the center of open fields
If a hand could make out the meaning, then perhaps
catching a glance from the living
the tortoise might stir again in the earth
muddy with dark and holy secrets, crawling to the threshold
Translated by James A. Wilson
Requiem
for the victims of June Fourth
Not the living but the dead
under the doomsday-purple sky
go in groups
Suffering guides forward suffering
at the end of hatred is hatred
the spring has run dry, the conflagration stretches unbroken
the road back is even farther away
Not gods but the children
amid the clashing of helmets
say their prayers
mothers breed light
darkness breeds mothers
the stone rolls, the clock runs backward
the eclipse of the sun has already taken place
Not your bodies but your souls
shall share a common birthday every year
you are all the same age
love has founded for the dead
an everlasting alliance
you embrace each other closely
in the massive register of deaths
Translated by Bonnie S. McDougall
and Chen Maiping
The Morning's Story
A word has abolished another word
a book has issued orders
to burn another book
a morning established by the violence of language
has changed the morning
of people's coughing
Maggots attack the kernel
the kernel comes from dull valleys
from among dull crowds
the government finds its spokesman
cats and mice
have similar expressions
On the road in the sky
the armed forester examines
the sun that rumbles past
over the asphalt lake
he hears the sound of disaster
the untrammeled sound of a great conflagration
Translated by Bonnie S. McDougall
and Chen Maiping
Coming Home at Night
After braving the music of the air-raid alarm
I hang my shadow on the hat stand
take off the dog's eyes
(which I use for escape)
remove my false teeth (these final words)
and close my astute and experienced pocket watch
(that garrisoned heart)
The hours fall in the water one after the other
in my dreams like depth charges
they explode
Translated by Bonnie S. McDougall
and Chen Maiping
Rebel
The shadow that tries to please the light
leads me to pass between
the aspen that has drunk milk
and the fox that has drunk blood
like a treaty passing between peace and conspiracy
The chair draped with an overcoat sits
in the east, the sun is its head
it opens a cloud and says:
here is the end of history
the gods have abdicated, the temples are locked
you are nothing but
a pictograph that's lost its sound
Translated by Bonnie S. McDougall
and Chen Maiping
Asking the Sky
Tonight a confusion of rain
fresh breezes leaf through a book
dictionaries swell with implication
forcing me into submission
memorizing ancient poems as a child
I couldn't see what they meant
and stood at the abyss of explication
for punishment
bright moon sparse stars
out of those depths a teacher's hands
give directions to the lost
a play of shadow mocking our lives
people slide down the slope of
education on skis
their story
slides beyond national boundaries
after words slide beyond the book the white page in pure amnesia I wash my hands clean and tear it apart, the rain stops
Translated by David Hinton
Untitled
The landscape crossed out with a pen
reappears here
what I am pointing to is not rhetoric
October over the rhetoric
flight seen everywhere
the scout in the black uniform
gets up, takes hold of the world
and microfilms it into a scream
wealth turns into floodwaters
a flash of light expands
into frozen experience
and just as I seem to be a false witness
sitting in the middle of a field
the snow troops remove their disguises
and turn into language
Translated by Eliot Weinberger and
Iona Man-Cheong
Delivering Newspapers
Who believes in the mask's weeping?
who believes in the weeping nation?
the nation has lost its memory
memory goes as far as this morning
the newspaper boy sets out in the morning
all over town the sound of a desolate trumpet
is it your bad omen or mine?
vegetables with fragile nerves
peasants plant their hands in the ground
longing for the gold of a good harvest
politicians sprinkle pepper
on their o
wn tongues
and a stand of birches in the midst of a debate:
whether to sacrifice themselves for art or doors
this public morning
created by a paperboy
revolution sweeps past the corner
he's fast asleep
Translated by Eliot Weinberger and
Iona Man-Cheong
1 From Gabi Gleichmann, “An Interview with Bei Dao,” Modern Chinese Literature 9 (1996), pp. 387–93.
DUO DUO
(1951-)
Duo Duo is the pen name of Li Shizheng, an important poet of the Misty school who worked as a journalist for the Peasant Daily in Beijing before leaving China to live in Holland and London. It was as a journalist that he witnessed the Tiananmen Square massacre of June 4, 1989. He had been scheduled to leave China on the fifth of June for a reading tour, his first poetry tour in the West. Like many Chinese writers, he chose to stay in the West rather than return to a China once again in the grip of political repression.
Duo Duo's influences include Baudelaire, Robert Desnos, Dylan Thomas, Sylvia Plath, Marina Tsvetaeva, and Federico García Lorca. His poems have an emotional, even nightmarish intensity just below a “misty” surface. Duo Duo began writing poetry privately during the Cultural Revolution, assuming that the political climate would never shift in such a way that he might actually become a published writer. He began to achieve some level of public acceptance in the 1980s, only to find himself a writer in exile, circumstances that make the sense of nightmare underlying his poems seem less surreal than real. His books have appeared in English in the collections Looking Out from Death and The Boy Who Catches Wasps: Selected Poems of Duo Duo.
Bell Sound
No bell had sounded to awaken memory
but today I heard
it strike nine times
and wondered how many more times.
I heard it while coming out of the stables.
I walked a mile
and again I heard: