MA YONGBO

 

Beehive In Winter 

Refugees in this sealed train car drifted from the sea

their language is shards of frost

To survive this winter

they must offer up their own darkness

they must forget that fragrant crossroads

the slow, sweet seeping beneath the linden trees

Once flight is no longer needed, wings become a burden

folding inward, folding, until they degrade into curved membranes

Perhaps they can still stir the rebellion of the air

silently unsettling the goddess who threshes with her long hair

like Schrödinger's cats, weary

caught between sticky birth and dry death

When snow surges from the horizon, in cold abstraction

demanding slow anger and submission.

Waking From Plato’s Cave

He leaves that primal, profound cave; 

a desolate place, no words can describe,

he is unaware of his time spent inside,

it seems many people just sit there in silence

he gropes his way out through echo-filled darkness,

torches light up his sweat-drenched face.

On a lush hillside, he stops to see sunlight

illuminate the plains beyond the mountain,

but he is surrounded by jungle; no path leads

to the peaceful villages at the end of the plains.

Following a stream of unknown origin,

he heads upstream,rose petals intermittently float by,

as if someone upstream scatters them

in a daze, he passes through thickets,

vast fields; a wilderness shimmering with gossamer.

On the opposite bank, a noblewoman picks flowers, 

singing an unknown song. 

Her steps are light, as if on grass,

her skirt trails in the floral river; 

both rivers might originate from the same garden.

Across the shimmering ripples, from afar,

he can feel the radiance of the woman’s mysterious virtue

his vision blurs, his steps falter; nearly fainting 

he feels the old wounds reddening again.

He does not disturb her; follows her silently.

If she threw him a withering glance 

he would forget his name,

and the shadows of things released in those endless years

the incomplete knowledge on which he once survived.

He sees his many selves,

as garments floating downstream;

at a turn of the stream, 

the woman turns around, her gaze burning

unsteady, he drags his last body

over to the other bank; he will wake 

forever, in the garden where the stream begins.

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 has published over eighty original works and translations since 1986 included 7 poetry collections. He focused on translating and teaching Anglo-American poetry and prose including the work of Dickinson, Whitman, Stevens, Pound, Williams and Ashbery. He recently published a complete translation of Moby Dick, which has sold over half a million copies. He teaches at Nanjing University of Science and Technology. The Collected Poems of Ma Yongbo (four volumes, Eastern Publishing Centre, 2024) comprising 1178 poems, celebrate 40 years of writing poetry.