Shallow-Grass Temple
I came to the Shallow-Grass Temple in winter
White eaves flying across a red corridor, prayer flags with Chinese characters
The golden Tang Dynasty hung on a ginkgo tree outside
I stood in front of the building of Tang Dynasty
As if my ancestors standing in front of their house
Undead, he revived in my eyes
I stretched out my modern arms
To touch the wooded wall
I saw the piety and discipline of our ancestors
I saw their wild hair, crying with songs
But my palm exuded its cold dew in winter
Broken Chinese characters jumping off prayer banners
I saw the affable Buddha behind the memorial tablet
But so shadowy in kimono
I walk through the Shallow-Grass Temple in winter
I came to the Shallow-Grass Temple, passing through the gate.
Spring Night
At quiet spring night, you can't hear the incipient sound of apricot blossoms
At warm spring night, I sweat dripping wet with my flushed love
Change a clean lightweight sweater
To take a walk at the moat. As you see
The river flipping the spring as the broken glass
At spring night, if you fail to know the direction of fragrance and light
Wings sprout out of your shoulders
Spring night also has its wings, flying at your balcony
And going into your dream
A dream at spring night shows no gateway
Departed mother goes like the laughter, in and out
One Person's Monastery
Dusk, so close to the sea, cloud curtain drooping further
Lightning sews up the heaven and earth
Waves of white keyboard play the music
Of the paradise. The golden light
Of glazed tile ignites up the silence of the entire temple
The figure of Buddha reflects sunset. In the smell of banana
A teardrop of candle dribbles down slowly
Rising the chanting sound farther from the air
The temple is empty, the mortal world ebbing with tide
Including mine, as if placed in the Buddhist paradise
In the temple of the sea, my heart barrier collapsed
The gods silently stand behind me
The Pier, Printed in the Book
Just tonight, the moonlight dripping from your Chinese brush
quietly opens as an oiled-paper umbrella
as the shape of a poem, its brilliance
crossing the tunnel of verses, bright
as ever. On the riverbank for the separation
whistling chant of sadness once pasted the river with the distant sky
your fluttering gown tore into a flying flag, away with my pulse,
married with me in a dream of flower sea
ever scattered from each other. Tonight with the same moonlight, the river
filled with cherry blossoms, its beauty
drops a hint of frenzy. Heart-throb of reunion sets sail on the riverbank
Remote pier printed already as a wordless book in my heart
Open it as we meet, while closed as we say goodbye
PAUL YANG’S NARRATION
Passing by Taipei, under the betel tree
along the highway, the sunlight
swimming down water grasses in the jungle,
through the shockproof houses, scattered low,
the coach goes smoothly toward Tainan. “Morning,
Ladies and Gentlemen”. Yang, the tour guide, more precisely,
keeps on his mother's memory, in 1948
in the tide of "great retreat",
as the mistress of a KMT junior officer,
She, together with her husband, on a quarside in Fujian
boarded on the ship bound for Taiwan --
In our familiar movie, at least she is
the winner of emotion, isn't she?
She replaced the first wife.
Her future son is now loudly
telling us the following things.
Yes, she stayed with him.
But then, the ship though limited for 750 passengers,
more than two thousand stood in iron cabin,
straight in the impenetrable confrontation,
male or female, weak or young, flesh to flesh.
They stood to vomit,
to scold and to die.
For a dozen of windy, rainy days and nights
She listened to the dead, along the way,
thrown into the sea. What a horrifying
"splash”. It was the animal surviving instincts
made this old woman, just stepping into marriage
struggle to survive from the boundless fecal waste under her feet,
No, to survive from a battle,
as a grain of sand in the sea.
SPRING
The wind stopped suddenly. Aroma came hidden through the window,
faint like the sensitive nerve. "It must be the rose
smelling beneath from the motionless blades. "She put on the crumpled dressing gown,
out of bed, a cup of lemon tea for herself. Over the years
he had kept fascinated in her body, unable to say for sure,
sweet or extra burden, as she often in doubt
what she had written was a good poem or a bad one.
She opened the window, sprinkling a handful of rice down to the stairs
for the chirping birds waiting on the chinar. The gigantic trees, clustering
along countless streets, was regarded as the unique advantages of her city,
but now, less and less, she suspected the government
had some collusion with the tree dealer, immediately stopped by her family:
"It's impossible". Closing the window, she received a call by a poet.
She told him: "Pleased not to find you
in Haizi’s poetry reading, so you're still the master",
but the master, after hearing "another accident",
obviously raised his voice for 2 degree: "Where? Where?"
This made her fine-tune his position in her heart.
Hanging up the phone, she went back to bed. Seemingly
each day slipped idly by, and she tried to find endless poetic.
Now, she took off her dressing gown, wondering how to start the present poem.
SKETCHING IN THE MIAO VILLAGE TO MEET A HORSE IN THE STABLE
It is just an adult horse. Its uplift muscles
Loom under the beautiful brown fur – the road here
Rocked by the mountains, the wild beauty by the stable.
Its eyes big and mild, its eyelids long and dense,
When you meet its deep eye pupil, a wisp of melancholy
(Imprisoned power) sinks into the bottom of your heart.
It does not remember how to leave its mother.
It doesn't feel lonely, (also in the stable live
A taciturn cow and a gadfly of enthusiasm.)
It does not look up to the birds of the sky.
Clouds run from behind the trees over the hills.
Never miss the distant mountains,
Miss the road overlapping peaks to the horizon.
(The wild Daisy and clover take female "trample dance” on the road.)
It does not remember how to run.
(The wind is wailing in its ears)
It does not understand freedom.
(Reins are the born gift given by the human.)
-- Oh who can help me to declare to it?
Before the God and universe, life lives equal.
(If the animal cannot, at least, the human can)
It trusts in the scorched land, familiar with the urging cry,
Plough, labor, loyal and obedient, mating under the master's whip
And watch. Gasping for breath loudly
In a horseshoe-shaped dung--
It hands over what it owes,
It has never dreamed of killing.
(Perhaps, it is the fate of its old mother.)
————————
SHI Shi-Ran, originally named YUAN Shi-Ping, poetess, painter, signed writer of Hebei College of Liberal Arts, once won the "Literary Revitalization Award" in Hebei province, “March-Third Poet Award” and the key support from “China Writers Association”. She was celebrated as one of "the most ten favorable young poet” by readers of Modern Poet Monthly. She has published her collected poems such as Tsing Yi Notes, and Persimmon Tree as well as her collected album of poetry and painting: Walking on Republic Street of China (Taiwan). Her poems have been translated into English, Swedish and Korean, etc. She is also the Deputy Chief Editor of the magazine The Sea Breezes. She has devoted herself to the inheritance and exploration of "syncretism of poetry and painting" of traditional Chinese culture. Her several painting works have been selected and stored up in the domestic and international exhibitions.
HAI AN (1965-), originally named LI Ding-Jun, Chinese poet and translator, the Council Member of the Shanghai Translator Association (STA), the prize-winner of STA-2011 Translator Prize and the invited author of UNESCO-EOLSS Encyclopedia in 2004. He graduated from the Hangzhou University in the 1980s, currently serving as the Associate Professor at College of Foreign Languages and Literature, Fudan University and the Adjunct Deputy Editor-in-Chief of Contemporary Poetry Quarterly based in Hong Kong. He has published more than ten books of poetry as the author, translator and editor, including Selected Poems by Hai An（2001）, Selected Short Poems by Hai An (2003, Hong Kong), Elegy—Hai An’s First Therapeutic Long Poem (2012, Taiwan), Selected Poems of Dylan Thomas (2014), Collected Poems of Samuel Beckett (2016), A Centennial Collected Papers on Sino-Occidental Poetry Translation (2007), The Frontier Tide: Contemporary Chinese Poetry (Europe / Qinghai, 2009), etc. He was once invited to attend several international poetry festivals, such as the 15th International Poetry Festival in Rosario, Argentina (2007), the 2nd International Poetry Festival at Qinghai Lake, China (2009), the 48th International Poetry Evenings in Struga, Macedonia (2009) and the International Poetry Festival of Mihai Eminescu in Craiova, Romania (2014).
Click to enter the Chinese version（点击阅读中文版）