Contents
- Pagoda Tree Flowers | 槐花开了
- The Sound of Spring Thunder in the Air Again | 又闻春雷
- Ms. Grain Rain | 姓谷的雨
- Afternoon | 午后
- Conversation between a Butter Sculptor and a Thangka Painter | 一个酥油花艺人与来自热贡的唐卡画大师的街边对话
- Letter to a Friend | 致友人书
- Wild Geese | 鸿雁
- Wilderness | 旷野
- Did you Deceive My Eyes? | 是你蒙住了我的眼睛
- Ferry | 摆渡
- Time’s Secret Code | 时间密码
From 21st Century Chinese Poetry, No. 6
- All the more unwilling to leave this old house,
- all the more not wanting to abandon an earthen jar or a pitcher.
- The iron pan can’t be left behind. I only moved it a few inches
- to startle the ashes.
— by Zhang Fanxiu, If at all Possible
- Heaven, you see, is blank, so blank,
- such a vast blank,
- I wonder what it takes to fill it.
- It reminds me of Death
- and the way it is registered on a clan’s genealogy;
- each entry requires a person to give up his life.
— Chen Guiliang, Filling in the Blanks
- The affair of these gorgeous flowers
- has a kind of innocent girlish candor,
- even though their showy bloom
- may not forecast a year of good harvest
- for the village elders.
— Ren Xianqing, Pagoda Tree Flowers
- Youlan, hidden orchid,
- concealed in thick woods on a high hill,
- ordinary people don’t see her still.
- .
- Youlan, secluded orchid,
- she does not need to over dress,
- surpassing the loveliest immortal goddess.
— Liu Congmei, Ode to an Orchid
- Afternoon was there for a siesta, a passing erotic dream,
- a breeze, a letter from the deceased. It had a shapeless volume.
- But these days we see it differently:
- it’s a heathen land,
- an unfathomable autonomous region.
- Something about it is no longer a secret,
- but the rest remains fearsome.
— Ah Xin, Afternoon
- My wilderness is not what you imagined—
- a gentle place with bent grass and bright stars.
- In my wilderness, I see distant dwellings with small lights
- and new crops calmly come out of the earth;
- they gather to see the shining moon, bigger than a stone mill.
- They wait for me to herd the mischievous grains back the barn.
— Bei Xiaohuang, Wilderness
- The telephone is ringing,
- up blows a blackish green wind,
- a seductive wind . . . for one’s lost living,
- but soon telephone wire, computer wire, and so on and so forth,
- all come to intrude in continuous coils; he feels himself bound by wires.
— Li Shangyu, Seductive Wind
