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)