Exploiting Pears at Midnight

After a brief respite over the past two weeks: This week's entries are from Luo Fu, the first of hopefully many Taiwanese poets to be on this blog. He was born Mo Luofu on mainland China in 1928, in Hengyang, Henan province. In 1949 at the age of 21 he left home for Taiwan as the KMT and nationalists fled a losing civil war with the CCP. Luo Fu graduated from Taiwan's Tamkang University, and his work includes over 30 volumes of poetry. He also was one of the founders of Taiwan's Epoch (创世纪), an important poetry journal, and several sections from his most famous work, one of the first (or the first? I'm not sure) epic poems in contemporary Chinese poetry entitled Death in the Stone Cell (石室之死亡), were selected for inclusion in and translated for Cyril Birch's Anthology of Chinese Literature in the "New Poets of Taiwan" section. I really dug on a bunch of these, and ended up translating a whole chunk from this website, so below are six that I thought worked reasonably. He's got a really cool traditional feel, very very slow-moving at times, reminiscent of traditional Chinese regulated verse or haiku or some such thing. But the themes and style are definitely weirder, more surrealist. It rocks. Lots of fun translation issues, of course. One of the best is the title of the first poem, "carving pears at midnight" (午夜削梨). The third character, xue (削), ostensibly here means "slice, carve, cut, peel," but it is also a character in the word boxue (剥削), "to exploit, take advantage of." So the title has a second meaning: "exploiting pears at midnight." Read the poem and you'll see why this is awesome. Reminds of Georgia O'Keefe or something. Unfortunately I couldn't think of a more sexual way to say it than "carve," can anyone think of one? The title of the second poem is pretty cool as well: I found out that the rather rare term he uses for midnight, zi ye (子夜), also alludes to a Six Dynasties-era female poet who "wrote about the life and feelings of a woman of the night." Hmm, not really a good way to allude to that in English. Still, knowing about it definitely adds a nice extra richness to the poem. Allusions are definitely one of the toughest things about Chinese poetry. For example, I'm basically 100% sure that "birchleaf" in that same second poem, tang (棠), refers to the classical Book of Poetry because of the way it's used. Something about a river as well I think. I've got to look that up. In the meantime, any Chinese friends want to enlighten?

午夜削梨 冷而且渴 我静静地望着 午夜的茶几上 一只韩国梨 那确是一只 触手冰凉的 闪着黄铜肤色的 梨 一刀剖开 它胸中 竟然藏有 一口好深好深的井 战栗着 拇指与食指轻轻捻起 一小片梨肉 白色无罪 刀子跌落 我弯下身子去找 啊！满地都是 我那黄铜色的皮肤	|||	carving pears at midnight cold, and thirsty i quietly gaze upon, atop the midnight table, one korean pear that certainly is an ice-cold tentacled, brass-skin-flashing pear. one slice of the knife: its chest, to my surprise, hides one mouthful of a deep, deep well trembling, thumb and forefinger gently twist a small piece of pear flesh white and guiltless the knife drops, and i bend my body to search ah! the whole ground is all my brass-colored skin
子夜读信 子夜的灯 是一条未穿衣棠的 小河 你的信像一尾鱼游来 读水的温暖 读你额上动人的鳞片 读江河如读一面镜 读镜中你的笑 如读泡沫	|||	midnight, reading a letter the midnight lamp is a small river that’s not yet worn the birchleaf your letter is like a fishtail swimming up to me and i read the water’s warmth read those scales on your forehead read the Yellow and Yangtze, as if reading one side of a mirror i read your laugh in the mirror as if reading bubbles floating
河畔墓园 为亡母上坟小记 膝盖有些些 不像痛的 痛 在黄土上跪下时 我试着伸腕 握你蓟草般的手 刚下过一场小而 我为你 运来一整条河的水 流自 我积雪初融的眼睛 我跪着。偷觑 一株狗尾草绕过坟地 跑了一大圈 又回到我搁置额头的土 我一把连根拔起 须须上还留有 你微温的鼻息	|||	cemetery at the riverbank on visiting my mother’s grave my knee has some pain strangely painless as i kneel on this sand and clay i try to stretch my wrist and grasp your thistlegrass hand so recently descended and for you i bring a whole river of water flowing from my snow-filled, melting eyes i kneel. i steal a look at the foxtail that surrounds the graveyard running a great circle and returning to where my forehead touched the earth and i tear it up by the roots it must, must hold some measure of your breath, still warm
金龙禅寺 晚钟 是游客下山的小路 羊齿植物 沿着白色的石阶 一路嚼了下去 如果此处降雪 而只见 一只惊起的灰蝉 把山中的灯火 一盏盏地 点燃	|||	golden dragon in the temple the late bell, now visitors descend the mountain’s small path sheeptooth ferns alongside the white stone steps the whole journey, chewing things over if it snows in this place we may see a startled gray cicada take the lanterns of the mountain cup by cup, and ignite
洗 脸 柔水如情 如你多脂而温热的手 这把年纪 玩起水来仍是那么 心猿 意马 赶紧拧干毛巾 一抹脸 抬头只见镜中一片空无 猿不啸 马不惊 水，仍如那只柔柔的手 ——一种凄清的旋律 从我的华发上流过	|||	face-washing soft water like a feeling like your greasy, tepid hand that takes this age and plays in the water, still so ape-hearted horse-headed hurriedly twisting the towel dry a wipe of the face raising my head, surprised to see this chunk of emptiness ape unhowling horse unsurprised water, still like that soft hand -- a cold and clear melody flowing out and over my gray hair
剔 牙 中午 全世界的人都在剔牙 以洁白的牙签 安详地在 剔他们 洁白的牙齿 依索匹亚的一群兀鹰 从一堆尸体中 飞起 排排蹲在 疏朗的枯树上 也在剔牙 以一根根瘦小的 肋骨 -洛夫	|||	picking teeth noon all peoples of the world picking their teeth with pure white toothpicks serenely picking their pure white teeth tied to an equal crowd of vultures from amongst pile of corpses taking flight lined up squatting atop the sparse, withered trees and each picking their teeth with a small, thin rib -Luo Fu, t. Rob Voigt

The Not-so-Northern Island

This week's poet I checked out by virtue of his name: Zhong Dao (中岛). Funnily enough, his name translates as "Middle Island," and it is very reminiscent of the well-known and previously discussed Bei Dao. Born Wang Lizhong (王立忠) in 1963, Baoqing County, Helongjiang Province in the far north-east of China, he graduated from the literature department at Harbin Normal University in 1989, and has since then worked as an editor, poet, freelancer, critic, and reporter. Zhong Dao started writing in 1983, and has since been published in dozens of journals and periodicals including People's Literature (人民文学), Shanghai Literature (上海文学), Mountain Flowers (山花) and so on, as well as in various anthologies, books, websites, and all that jazz. Zhong Dao posts to his blog often and continues to publish. The three poems I've translated for today were posted August of last year online at China Poesy (诗词在线). I liked my first taste of Zhong Dao quite a bit. He's a quiet poet, drifting subtly through images and observation... he's one of those poets who engages in slow, careful looking. Each of these poems finds him grasping at a passing moment, trying desperately but unable to keep hold of it. Each carries the unspoken sadness of a moment in time forever lost. Really great stuff. Several fun poetic problems: in "The Ferry Crossing," it seems unclear to me if "一天" means to express "the day" or "the whole sky" (in Chinese tian, 天, can mean either "day" or "sky"), and I think it's likely to mean a bit of both. Earlier in the poem he talks about both "restless days" and the "black stars," so I feel like it might be calling back upon both of those earlier images, and I could find no way to express both simultaneously in English. I went with "day" because it felt stronger to me. Also, in the next line, while tiaodong, 跳动, can mean "beating" as a heart does, in the context I couldn't help but feel he meant to use some of the more literal interpretation - "jumping movement," and so what was one word in Chinese becomes two in English - "jumping, beating."

渡口 紧靠渡口 有一家酒馆 在海浪飘起的时候 就会有几个或大或小的面孔挤贴在 玻璃的窗口上，有些像露出头的鲨鱼 他们的面孔被海浪冲刷着 然后 突然消失 颤抖在一颗颗黑星星下的海洋 飘浮在和拥挤在他们 浮躁的日子里 像渡口的铁锁 敲打着这些 摇晃的身体 一天的焦虑穿过他们的毛孔 穿过所有跳动的心脏 穿过这个渡口 向下一个目标 伸出鳏夫的舌头	|||	The Ferry Crossing Leaning on the ferry crossing, there’s a tavern. When the ocean waves flutter in the air, faces squeeze up, all sizes, glued outside on the glass of the window, like sharks surfacing. The faces are washed clean by the waves, and then they vanish. The seas and oceans shiver under a quilt of black stars, floating in and crowded in their restless days, like the ferry crossing’s iron lock knocking on these swaying bodies. The anxieties of the day pass through their pores pass through all the jumping, beating hearts pass through this ferry crossing on towards the next goal reaching out celibate tongues.
困惑的季节 在墙上 我看见了我自己 像飞翔的鸟 有时又有点像 涌动的龟 那些 似乎乱码的图像 成了现在的五官 存在使更薄弱的心 无法继续表达 一个生命不能安静地 留在他的心里 就像我无法活在自己的血液里 也无法来表达应该表达的 此时的感受	|||	Muddled Season On the wall I see myself like a circling bird, at times a bit like a bobbing tortoise, those cluttered-code images becoming now features of this face. Existence makes weaker hearts incapable of continued expression. But a life can’t quietly sit inside its mind, just like I can’t live in my own blood, though unable to express what I should - the experience of this moment.
那个远方 城市的表情在他的眼前 像鸽子飞走 存在成为回忆的一种 位置停留在窗前的树影上 我停留在你的黄色的裙子里 变迁在神经的语言中抖动 春天在我的身后 跳闪着 是过去的油灯 那个远方 一群陌生的表情 成为我孤独的墙 -中岛	|||	That Distant Place In his eyes, the face of the city is a pigeon taking off, its existence becoming a peculiar memory seated for a time outside the window in the tree’s shade. I pause as well in the folds of your yellow skirt, vacillate and shake as neurons fire word after word. The summer at my back, leaping and sparkling, is an old oil lamp. That distant place - a crowd of strange faces becomes my lonely wall. -Zhong Dao (t. Rob Voigt)