Cold View

I walk to the wilds

All emotion is instantly frozen Five flickering crows

Suddenly flash in my eyes

I am now lost

At a loss

Better I turn around and go Back, walk back,

From the crows, away

From the vastness over earthen tombs

Planting

I want to root roses in your shoes

Sprout violets from your ears

I am running through a sky of big

snow Snow drops on my body, light as daylight

From pieces I piece together your gentle words

At times worrying at strange calligraphy

My words burst into your phrases and lines

My midnight blurs into your hair

I plant violets in your shoes

And roses sprout from your lips

————————

Qiu Huadong was born in 1969 in Xinjiang. He is member of the United Youth Association and is on the board of the China Writers Leading member. His major works include ten novels, A Summer Taboo, A Nighttime Promise, Daytime Unease, A Noon Confession, Flower, and Diana’s Orion. He has also written over 150 novel as and short stories, collected in the volumes Reflections on the Murky River, A Crying Game, New Urbanites, and Midnight Madness. He has published essays in the collections Colors of the Mountain, A Private Notebook, Wandering in the City at Midnight, Living with a Master, and poems in the volumes Flowers and Stones and From Fire to Water. Altogether his works amount to over 40 volumes with a total of over 4 million characters. Several of his books have been translated into French, and individual pieces have been published in English, German, Japanese, and Korean. A few works have been adapted as plays and filmed for television. In addition he has won the Lao She Prize in Literature, the Shanghai Literature Prize for fiction, Mountain Flower Prize for fiction, among others.

Translated by Tony Barnstone（托尼·巴恩斯通 / 译）

Click to enter the Chinese version