CHINESE - WEN YIDUO | Lezenswaard

WEN YIDUO

Silent Night

This lamp and these four walls bright with its bleach,
this desk and chair like faithful friends in reach,
this paper fragrance of old books beside
my darling teacup white as a chaste bride,
my young son nursing at his mother’s breast,
my elder son whose snores announce good health and rest…
This eerie silent night. This rounded peace. These notes
of a thanksgiving song swell in my throat

but crack into a cursing diatribe.
No, silent night. I can’t, won’t take your bribe.

Who can enjoy a peace between four walls in here,
when his world reaches out to real frontiers?
These walls cannot block out the blast of war.
How can they halt my heart pounding? What for?

Better to choke my mouth with mud and sand
than croon the joy or grief of just one man.
Better lend mice my skull to burrow through
and feed this bag of flesh to maggots too,
if for a book of verse, a glass of wine and slight
comfort tick-tocking through a silent night
I fall deaf to my neighbors as they moan,
blind to those orphaned, widowed, shivering alone,
to men twitched dead in trenches, to madmen who chew
their beds, and all the horrors that life grinds us through.

Oh no, good fortune. I can’t take your bribe.
My world is not what these walls circumscribe.
Just hear the gunfire! Death is roaring, reaving.
Silent night, how could you keep my heart from heaving?

Dead Water

Here is a ditch of hopeless water,

The fresh breeze would not even raise half a ripple.

One might as well throw in a few more tins and scraps of metal

And why not pour in your left-over food and gravy

Perhaps the green of the copper will turn into emerald,

Rust on the tin cans emerge as petals of peach blossom;

Then let grease weave a layer of patterned muslin,

And bacteria brew vapours of coloured clouds.

Let the dead water ferment into a gully of green wine,

Floating pearl-like crowds of white foam;

The laughter of small pearls will change them to large pearls

Broken by mosquitoes to steal the alcohol.

Even a ditch of hopeless dead water

Can boast of some ornaments.

If the green frogs can’t bear the silence,

Then we can say that the dead water can sing.

Here is a ditch of hopeless dead water,

This cannot be a place where beauty lives,

Better let ugliness cultivate it,

And see what kind of world comes of it.

Transl. Tao Tao Sanders.

也許

也許你真是哭得太累，
也許，也許你該睡一睡，
那麼叫夜鷹不要咳嗽，
蛙不要號，蝙蝠不要飛。

不許陽光撥你的眼廉，
不許清風刷上你的眉，
無論誰都不能驚醒你，
撐一傘松蔭庇護你睡。

也許你聽著蚯蚓翻泥，
聽這小草的根鬚吸水，
也許你聽著這般音樂，
比那咒罵的人聲更美。

那麼你先把眼皮閉緊，
我就讓你睡，我讓你睡，
我把黃土輕輕蓋著你，
我叫紙錢兒緩緩的飛

Perhaps

Perhaps you have wept and wept, and can weep no more.

Perhaps. Perhaps you ought to sleep a bit;

then don't let the night hawk cough, the frogs

croak, or the bats fly.

Don't let the sunlight open the curtain onto your eyes.

Don't let a cool breeze brush your eyebrows.

Ah, no one will be able to startle you awake:

I will open an umbrella of dark pines to shelter your sleep.

Perhaps you hear earthworms digging in the mud,

or listen to the root hairs of small grasses sucking up water.

Perhaps this music you are listening to is lovelier

than the swearing and cursing noises of men.

Then close your eyelids, and shut them tight.

I will let you sleep, I will let you sleep.

I will cover you lightly, lightly with yellow earth.

I will slowly, slowly let the ashes of paper money fly.

End of Days

Dew sobs in the choked waterpipes’ bamboo.
Green plantain tongues lick at the window like a bone.
As chalk-white walls around me back away
the room is now too huge for me to fill alone.
I light a firepit up in my heart’s chamber.
Waiting for my guest from afar, I hush and brood
feeding the flame with telltale turds of rats.
A mottled scaly snakeskin is my kindlewood.
The cock crows hurry. Ash heaps in the pit.
A cold dark wind glances my mouth in one soft blow
and there’s my visitor before my eyes.
I close my eyes at last to follow him and go.

Discovery

I’ve come, I shout, bursting out in tears of woe,

“This is not my China—Oh, no! No!”

I’ve come because I heard your summoning cry.

Riding on the wind of time, raising a torch high,

I came. I knew not this to be unwarranted ecstasy.

A nightmare I found. You? How could this be!

This is terror, a bad dream over the brim of an abyss,

But not you, not what my heart continues to miss!

I ask heaven, ask the winds of all directions.

I ask (my fist pounding the naked chest of the earth)

But there is no answer. In tears I call and call you

Until my heart leaps out—ah, here you are!

Red Candle

Oh, red candle!

So red a candle!

Oh, poet!

Show your heart to compare

Are they of the same color?

Oh, red candle!

Who is it that made the wax — gave you a body?

Who is it that lighted it — kindled your soul?

Why should the wax be burnt

To give out the light?

One wrong after another;

To contradict! To conflict!

Oh, red candle!

No wrong, no wrong!

Your light should be “burned” out —

This is just a natural way.

Oh, red candle!

Once made, just burn it!

Burn, just burn!

Break the dream of the world,

Boil the blood of the world —

To save their souls,

To destroy their hell!

Oh, red candle!

The time when your heart is kindled

Is the day your tears begin to run.

Oh, red candle!

The craftsman made you

Just for burning.

Why are you hurt and tearful?

Aha! I know it!

It is the remaining wind that disturbs your light,

You are reduced to tears

When your light sways!

Oh, red candle!

Just let your tears run! How can you hold them back?

Please let your essence

Ceaselessly run into the human world,

To bring about the consulate flowers

And to produce happy fruit!

Oh, red candle!

Each tear you drop, each fraction of heart you will break.

Heartbreak and tears are your result,

But creating light is your cause.

Oh, red candle!

“Ask not for gains, but for pains.”

Forget Her

Forget her, like some forgotten flower—

Rosy dawn on petals,

Breath of fragrance at the heart—