MA YONGBO

 

 

Pure Work

 

It took a whole morning to write the following verse

“With every step closer, relatives of summer approaches

on every inch of land, tears are shed.”

I cross it out the next day

I’ve been writing much less these days

Now I decide to do more

 

“I see relatives of summer

dreaming each other like mirrors.”

or “I remember your expression of meditation

in a quarry in Greece, sunset glow and milk……”

energy of summer is distracted----

Grey glow on the clouds, stains of the windowpanes, butterflies

water drops on swallow-tailed wings, high towers,

footprints vanishing in the sea

As things seem to bear no relation with each other’s

One can go freely through the gaps between them

 

Another day, I wrote: things

loosely connected with function words

Behind the castle built with chessmen

Someone is turning a paper cannon

“Relatives of summer approaches, every step closer,

exposing smiles and teeth.”

I wonder if things will change when I revise my writing,

or even postpone time and fate

But I care more about weather (many elderly lost their lives

to this unbearable heat), or prepare myself some lunch

 

So I drift a whole day on the river

Or walk on quicksand, kicking the gravel,

Look up into the “clouds ", “reflections of clouds on water”

and “white bridge”, but I still feel unreal

As if I’m still passing through words

Still wearing myself down in a poem

 

Poplar

 

On snowy days, I promised to send you a full room of yellow butterflies,

I once went to the frozen stream,

and returned in the evening cool,

but the yellow butterflies had already landed in my heart.

 

These days, the snow keeps falling,

the poplar becomes even whiter,

our room becomes darker,

do you still miss those butterflies on the stream?

will they still fly here next year,

fluttering down, landing on your paper models?

But it's not possible this year.

I can only sit far away, watching you silently.

The autumn sun has made you so tired,

your face blushes, like a country girl,

the folds of your dress no longer swaying,

but in dry places, snowflakes always whisper,

falling in your heart.

 

Now, shouldn't we remember something?

the days thrown into the grass have been covered by soft pine needles.

Hair has also sunk into the mud,

bitten fast by my teeth.

From a very deep place,

I will still return cold,

waiting for you to come to the window.

From the yellow light,

countless butterflies will fly out,

fluttering in the passage of time,

landing faintly in my heart.

 

MA YONGBO

 

MA YONGBO was born in 1964, Ph.D., representative of Chinese avant-garde poetry, and a leading scholar in Anglo-American poetry. He is the founder of polyphonic writing and objectified poetics. He is also the first translator to introduce British and American postmodern poetry into Chinese, the various postmodern poetry schools in Chinese are mostly guided by his poetics and translation. He has published over eighty original works and translations since 1986 included 9 poetry collections. His translations included the work of Dickinson, Whitman, Stevens, Pound, Williams and Ashbery. He recently published a complete translation of Moby Dick, which has sold over 600,000 copies.