SELF-PORTRAIT

Wind blows over a ridge, speaking softly to a child at twilight. The wind  goes off into the distance where a tale awaits it. Leave your name on this  land, child, for your time will come to die proudly.--(Inscription)

I am history written on this land in the Nuosu tongue

I was born to a woman who could hardly bear to cut the birth cord

My agonizing name

My beautiful name

My name full of hope

Is a poem of manhood

Gestated for a thousand years

By a woman at her spindle

My tradition-bearing father

Is a man among men

People call him Zhyge Alu [1]

My never-aging mother

Is a singer upon this land

She is its deep-running river

My eternal beloved

Is a beauty among beauties

People call her Gamo Anyo [2]

In each of my thousand deaths as a man

I lay down to rest facing left

In each of my thousand deaths as a woman

I lay down to rest facing right

At the end of a thousand mourning rites

I am friendly words of a guest from afar

At the high-point of a thousand mourning rites

I am a mother's quavering syllables

Though all this includes me

In truth I am the millennial conflict

Of justice against evil

I am the millennial descendant

Of love and fantasy

Truly down through the centuries

All the treachery and loyalty

The births and deaths have been mine

Ah world, let me give answer

I---am---of---the---Nuosu---people!  

[1] Zhyge Alu is a mythic hero of the Nuosu whose exploits are recounted in an

epic of the same name.

[2] Gamo Anyo is a legendary beauty of the Nuosu people.

SUN

Looking at the sun, I wish

With help of its rays

To discover and rouse my ancestors

Looking at the sun, I speak loudly

In a way they can hear

I address their souls

In my own mystical language

Looking at the sun, despite wounds

And not being understood by others

Still I believe

Most people belong to the good side

Looking at the sun, how wonderful it is

The invisible tide of the season laps

Against my bronze skin

Looking at the sun always makes me miss

Those people before my time

Who once could feel this warmth

And are no longer in this world

TRUE PICTURE

——for Juan Gelman[1]

Seeking the truth of a wall

Wings carry you

Toward the limits of panic

Outside of words

Awareness crawls on a dream’s edge

Seeking the name of a gunman

And the distance of a bullet

Lies are switched day and night

Wherever you go to sing

Your birdlike notes will greet

Countless sorrowful mornings

There is no choice, for one who has seen

The bones and hair of the dead

Indignation will pour from your eyes

Though your heart is a dried-up well

[1] Juan Gelman is a modern Argentinian poet and winner of the Cervantes Prize.

FREEDOM

Once upon a time I asked a truly wise man

What is Freedom?

The wise man’s answers always came from ancient texts

I thought that’s all there was to Freedom

Once on the Nalati plain

As night was falling

I saw a horse

Walking slowly, with no aim

And a drunken

Kazakh rider

Who was sleeping soundly on its back

It’s true the wise man explained the meaning of freedom

But who could tell me, there on the Nalati plain

Which was freer——

The horse or the rider?

(Tr. by Andrea Lingenfelter)

INVISIBLE RIPPLES

There was something, before

I was born

It simply existed

Like air and sunlight

There is something, rushing in the blood

But if you used words

It would be difficult to explain

There is something, long hidden in

The deepest recesses of consciousness

You may call it to mind but still it’s unclear

There is something, and even though it isn爷t part of reality

I nonetheless believe

The eagle is our father

And the road our forefathers walked

Is certain to have remained white

There is something, and I fear it’s become an eternity

Given just a little more time

Watching the mountains that lean on each other all day

My own two eyes would grow moist

There is something, and I tacitly understand

Everything in creation has a soul, and when a person dies

They find rest in a space between earth and sky

There is something, and it seems it will never vanish

If you were of the people

You would still be living on earth!

(Tr. by Andrea Lingenfelter)

TIME

In my hometown

I fail to witness

The entire history of an earthen wall

Because at some instant

I fail to be present

When a dust-speck goes through

Its whole birth-to-death process

O, time!

Who uses unseen scissors

to cut you into pieces

on the platform of distance and velocity

Actually we needn爷t wonder

about the origin of time

because there never was

anything like a beginning to time

Nor need we wonder

about its final resting place

because in the boundless universe

it is equal to infinity

Time is the heart in the dark

Each time it throbs

like a bolt of lightning, it will be

a bridge joining past, present and future

Believe me, it is none of God’s will

It seems like the absolute truth

that time will never return

if it gets away from us

All of life and thought and heritage

dwell in the temple of time

Oh, time,

Most impartial judge!

It brings a lie to trial

while it upholds justice

Time in the final moment

changes all existing forms

of spirit and matter

It is ever born from death

and ever dies in birth

It includes everything

and is beyond everything

If there is something

actually immortal in this world

I would definitely say: it is time!

(Tr. by Denis Mair & Hai An)

——————

Jidi Majia is one of the most representative poets in contemporary China and an international poet with wide influence. He has won many important literary prizes, both in China and abroad. His poems have been translated into nearly forty languages and  published over 80 collections of poetry in several.The current vice chairman of the Chinese Writers Association.

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