I Want to Close Gunfire Without the Door

——To The Eve before the Battle of Waterloo, a painting by Myers

My dear love are you to leave now

No  youcannot go  I want to linger forever inyour arms

Hark there is report of a gun from the south

I want to use my love for you  to close gunfire without the door

My dear beauty  please open the door for me to go

I am a soldier  yes to the south of France

The war flame of anti-France alliance isspreading to my home

I will pursue the brave and battlewise Frenchemperor

With heroic spirit like him

Wearing wind like fire with twolightning-like eyes

You see his steed

Four hooves flying  neighing and howling

The horse tail furling  mighty and powerful

I want to go to the battleground  to safeguard dignity

A soldier should devote his blood to hismotherland

No  ifyou really love me

Now you can set aside the concern for your motherland

Your motherland  thousands of soldiers

And my motherland  only you

Yes  my dear

You are my life

You are my motherland

My love if you really love me

Please do not leave me  please also take me as your life

Please take me  also as your motherland

Please do not open the door  we cannot thus say goodbye

The pitiable woman has sorrowful eyes

The young officer has blank expression

In lingering love  the road ahead is beckoning

Loyalty in the bosom  with boundless love

Oh my beautiful sweetheart

The merciless war examines the courage and uprightness of a man

Oh my loveable beauty  please open the door quickly

I am a French military officer

I want to dedicate my whole body in the gunfire

O God do you see

My painful heart is bleeding

His heartbeat has smashed my love

The moon oh the moon

Please don’t move away

For it to be forever this dark

The moon oh the moon

Please don’t move away

Don’t move away …

To Usethe Love of Life

Hark spring is here

It does not find fault with the obstructionof mountain road  the aloofness of iceand snow

To echo the sunshine with a soft emotion

It reminds me of the love of life — reconciliation

I want to make peace with those who envy me

I want to make peace with those who hurt me

I want to make peace with those who arevulgar

I want to make peace with those who are barbarous

Grass has forgotten the ravage of chilly cold

Flowers have forgotten the tearing of wildwind

The blue sky has forgotten the screen of the solar spot

The white clouds have forgotten the tanglement in crying

Please accept my reconciliation

With the advent of spring you are still sonarrow-minded

The bottoms of monkeys are always red

Even fresh from a bath  the beak of a crow is still black

The mistakes of yore  not all yours

In blood there are pollution and thrombus

Among the things left by our ancestors

There is a lot of problem loan

My beautiful tolerance is matching of theseasons

The sunshine everywhere  I pray the wound to be healed

Only when the pain is thrown off, can joy beobtainable

Hard ice has melted

Warmth please tell me whether you can penetrate the bone

The Camel Howling Pierces the Setting Sun

Each rising and falling of the camel  there is the hardship of childbirth

This time it gives up the stalwart foreigner  the shank collapses all of asudden

The thin legs are shivering as if electrified

The evening wind is editing its howling

The joys of tourists have been discounted

The camel fails to stand up

The host restores the displaced joints

Its anxious howling pierces the setting sun

The spurting blood  dyes the desert into purple

The moon rises

On the desert an iron gate drops  rustling national seclusion

Sharks Have Stopped Entertainment 

The camel does not deduct a percentage from asum of money

Exerting itself  it is never miserly

Leave happiness to the guest

Bury bitterness in the sand

Its convulsing four legs are disarranged into Arabic words — pain

The host is sympathetically fondling

Schools and schools of sharks have stopped entertainment

Suddenly I find my throat choked with emotion

Originally believing the world is filled with my own solicitude

To be enlightened here

It is smaller than a grain of dust and ofsand and the Sahara Desert

Flag Cloud Atop Mount Everest

My love of prelife  moving toward me

Oh flag cloud in the western sky

Joys mixed with sorrows

The mountain is a heavenly ladder

The water is a mirror

A gossamer piece of clothes

Accompanies your aloofness

In this life looking-up has been cast

Even within my camera shot

Failure to enter my bosom

Even into my dream

Failure to get together with me

All people who wait for you beneath Mount Everest

Not knowing how many dark nights into daybreak

Poverty-stricken  shivering all over

Fail to gain your appreciation

How lucky I am

The first time I pay my parental visit

You are waiting here

The huge form veiled in dignified bearing

The eagle holding arms to tug at your clothes

The seawater carries the precious stone  signifying betrothal gifts

With a scornful face

You turn away into depth of the mountain

Collecting Poems in the Wind

I do not call the wind follows the dream

Neither the head nor the tail can beseen  in crowds

It is said it is woman fan of Moon Goddess

Collecting poems in the wind  but I do not have poems

Only a string of lanterns beneath the arbor

Those undulating hills  smiling waters

Are talking instead of me

The wind back to the posthouse

The flag now appears and then disappears  dancing over the platform

The poet’s eyes of the river  concentrated into the moon

Calm and collected

Regret

Quite a disorder

I hear the running years have run afar

A beauty in her old age  to whom a blind eye is turned

Trifles over essentials  reaching for what is beyond the grasp

Through time-space  drilling wood to make fire

The wind packs off a batch after anotherbatch of years

A trace on the face is the postmark

Beautiful time is under subtraction

They all go westward  but their lips are sealed

The remaining time  no cloud no wind

Only people are moving  but not as they like

The Unextinguishable Fire

All beautiful passion has died out

Only the fire of jealousy  unextinguishable through centuries

The kindling  refuses to be buried

The keyboard is shivering  to enkindle the primacord

All splitting can be made up

Only with split personality  forever singing in the fire of jealousy

He who plays with fire  forever gets burned

Like the self inflammable volcano  always active

There is a virus called heart cancer

The sign emits from eyes

The explosive pieces  will turn into light of blood

To obscure mortal corruption and purity

Wordless Sorrow

Tonight you fail to come according to appointment

The dream like the wind without order  lacksa theme

I advance blankly

The fluting is flimsy and lingering  the melancholy of your love for me

The flag of Sarhu  flies from the battlefield of Ming and Qing dynasties to now

Nurhachi led his post Jin soldiers  counterattack in four directions  to do or die

Fateful verdict: in 5 days  50 thousand killed

Great War between Ming and Qing  the latter victorious

Qing army has defeated the many by using thefew

Ming army in flight like a landslide

A lapse of nearly 400 years

Amorism here

Worry about flying horse hooves  arrows flying hither

Seeing unexpectedly  how dare to open eyes

Horses neighing and soldiers crying  the bugle still here

The river overflowing with blood

On the battleground with lingering gun smoke

History halts people cast a backward glance

Sentimental winds & flowers & snow& moon  wordless sorrow

To smooth and carry anecdotes of the prelife

Leaving the lament of history

The Love Letters of Autumn

Falling leaves  are the love letters of autumn

The strokes hither and thither on the leafvein are my yearning

Bittersweet genuine and sincere

Falling leaves  my lost diary

Time is stealthily prying into privacy

Sometimes I can feel its jealousy

Falling leaves  are the words of autumn

To treasure the sweet memory

I will be waiting for you under the tree atthe turn of seasons

 (Translated by ZHANG Zhizhong)

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Aboutthe author:

Lan Fan, is a famous poetess-writer in contemporary China. Her real name is Liu Yan, a native of Sichuan Province, P. R. China. She is a member of Chinese Writers’ Association, of Chinese Poetry Association, professor, master’s tutor, and director of the Teaching & Research Institute of Sichuan University of Media & Communications. Her works have been carried on domestic magazines including People’s Literature, Poetry Periodical, Selected Poems, The Star Poetry Periodical, Poetry Forest, Literature Harbor, Poetry Monthly, Sichuan Literature, Western Literature, as well as magazines and newspapers of Japan, America, Canada, Hong Kong, and Macao, etc. She has published 6 books, and has won various literary prizes. Her works have been anthologized in many books and dictionaries such as Dictionary of Chinese Writers, Dictionary of Chinese Poets, Representative Works of Contemporary Chinese Poets, Annual Selection of World Chinese Poems, Annual Choice Selection of Chinese Poets 2014—2015, Directory of Representative Works of Contemporary Chinese Poets, Biennial Book of Poetry: Guided Reading in Contemporary Chinese Poems 2015, Selected Chinese Poems 2016 Chinese-English Bilingual, Annual Selection of Excellent Chinese Poems 2017, Ranking List of New Chinese Poems 2017, and Calendar of New Chinese Poems 2018, etc.

About the translator:

ZHANG Zhizhong is professor of Foreign Languages College of Nankai University. Meanwhile, he is guest editor of The World Poets Quarterly. Upto now, he has published over 80 books and 100 academic papers; besides, he has published his own poems, and he has won various prizes. He has undertaken 2 projects funded by the National Social Science Foundation of China and 1 key project funded by Tianjin Social Science Foundation. His English translation of Chinese poetry is widely acclaimed throughout the world, and is favorably reviewed by international poets and translators. His view on poetry translation: spirit over form, prose enjambment to rewrite Chinese poetry into sterling English poetry.

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