Seven Feet

Seven Feet

Su Shaolian

   t. Rob Voigt

Mom brought home seven feet of cloth from the market, and I sighed a deep regret. Why hadn’t I gone myself? I tell her, “Ma, seven feet of cloth isn’t enough to make my pants, we need at least eight!” She replies, “Seven feet was good enough before, have you really grown again?” I don’t respond, and she feels herself shrink a bit shorter.

On that piece of cloth, the same old size, mom paints a version of me, then gently with scissors she clips and trims, and gently I cry out, ah!

She cuts me down, cuts me open, then with needles stiches me up, patches me… and makes me grow up.

Jay Hopler

Here's one that's a bit backwards - my first attempt at a translation into Chinese, rather than from it. A relatively simple poem by Jay Hopler, I feel like I more or less got it across. Artfully? Who knows. Anywho.

喔, 無斑點的悲戚

著 / Jay Hopler 

譯 / Rob Voigt 

羅馬的女人那麼美妙,

就像漫動作地被打致死似的,

看著她們--; 就像流血.

因此我就不看

她們. 我看橄欖樹上棲息

的鸚鵡,

                      

某種古老的東西 (大約是教堂吧)

後面的月亮上漲, 前幾個昏星--. 從我書齋窗, 可以

見到伽利略發明望遠鏡的

那棟房子. 我要知道他那夜晚

在想著什麼 – 他首次

搜索蒼天的那個

夜晚; 要知道是否有什麼

他設法避免看到.

O, the Sadness Immaculate

Jay Hopler

The women in Rome are so beautiful,
It's like being beaten to death in slow motion,
Looking at them—; it's like bleeding.

So I don't look
At them. I look at the parrots nesting
In the olive trees,

The moon rising behind some ancient
Something-or-other (a church, probably), the first few stars—. From my study
    window, I can
See the house where Galileo invented

The telescope. I wonder what he was
Thinking about that night—that night
He first searched

Heaven; I wonder what it was he was
Trying not to see.

Chen Kehua Returns

Well, yay! I'm now working on a large set of translations for Chen Kehua (陳克華), and have met with him a couple of times so far. He's a really interesting guy and I like his work a great deal. I'm aiming to have the set completed by October so we can submit it for the Taipei City Gov't fund that could help with publishing costs. Exciting stuff.

I also noticed that my earlier post on him is now the #1 result for an English search for "Chen Kehua" on the Taiwan Google. Hoho! Not that anyone ever searches that. Anyway here's another of his that I quite like:

Loneliness – Autopsy

What is this loneliness? Each night

I raise my knife to perform a self-dissection,

dreaming that in some corner of the body

I might find that hidden locus of infection.

In the small room, a rigid corpse

flat upon the disordered bed, saliva and vomited foodstuffs,

all filth sprinkled on an unclean bedsheet.

Slicing through the ribs, opening fine lines inward

I find the viscera still in good order

but lacking a waxy luster – I probe with my fingertips

and as expected find they have long since frozen, hardened.

It must be glandular, what with these intolerable

periodic eruptions, physiological phenomena

in the blood, or in the thick green bile -

I discover an entire cavity soaked in some kind of rare

and strange hormone, draw it out

and concentrate it, and inject the guinea pigs

to make observations.

(What is this loneliness?)

In the end those small rodents begin to know

and die one by one. I mark down:

In that narrow, crowded cage

they trampled upon one another; they could not see

their own path of reluctant corpses

And so I reach a conclusion. When I

suture up the wounds, return the organs,

daybreak outside the window, crowd of birds chattering in the trees,

in the corner of the lab the myna bird raises an anxious echo,

fiercely beating itself against the bars of its cage.

“Are you lonely?” I go to feed him,

offering up my entrails.

May

May,
in transparent veins,
green blood cells swim…
May is just this kind of living thing.

May strolls naked through the streets.
In the hills, it breathes in golden hairs.
In the wilderness, it sings in silver light.
Just so, May wanders unseen.

Zhan Bing (詹冰)

Chen Kehua

Saw Chen Kehua (陳克華) at a lecture at Shida recently. He's an interesting fellow, relatively young, a doctor by profession, and openly gay. I won't try to describe the lecture, 'cause I think it'd be hard to describe well why I liked it. Basically though, he was extremely blunt, about many things (including that few in the class had read his work) and it was great. He has a website that is Web 1.0 in the best way. Here's a quick shot at a poem. Though it's relatively simple, I found it pretty hard to translate actually, and the original I think is not quite as "floofy" or "out-there" as maybe my translation is. Does that make any sense? Related notes, the "unbright" in the title has some pretty strong Buddhist implications in the original, and in fact is literally the translation of the word Avidya. Hopefully that factoid will be somewhat enlightening. Okay.

無明之淚 活著　忽而有淚 像與夢有約　但夢終究缺席 我可以遺忘那夢　但失落仍在 我懷抱這失落　於人間求其次 再其次其次其次　其次－－活著 就忽而有淚　但忘了淚的理由 像隱隱明白生　生的侷限與徒然 又毫不明白生　身在此生的茫然與盲點 只是忽而有淚　人間之淚 落在夢的夜空　比黑暗更虛無 比星光更 迫切。 unbright tears alive          and suddenly with tears image and dream arrange to meet          but dream doesn’t show I can forget that dream          but loss still remains I cherish, I hold this loss          as the human world seeks the next and the next the next the next          the next  -- alive so, suddenly with tears          but tears’ cause forgotten as though faintly understanding life          life’s boundary and futility then understanding not at all          body in this life’s vast and blind spot just suddenly with tears          tears of the human world falling in dream’s night sky         than darkness more empty than starlight more urgent.

throwin' her voice

Well, here I am, back to the blog after quite a long silence, caused by, in succession: illness, graduate school applications, reading a ton of theoretical whatnots, a trip to japan, more grad school apps, and the Fulbright midyear conference. The second half of my grant will be much more focused on actually producing translations than was the first, and I'm going to tie myself to this blog for some accountability. It'll be great.

Today's poet is Xia Yu (夏宇), the pen name of Huang Qingqi (黃慶綺), born in 1956, still living, and one of Taiwan's great post-modernist poets. I was recommended to read her in close succession by both a Taiwanese friend and the Fulbright Taiwan director, so I figured it must be done. I picked up her 1990 book "Ventriloquy" the other day and have been really enjoying it so far, so below are relatively quick attempts at the first three poems in the book. They are definitely tough to understand in the original, so translation is not a straightforward task, but hey, might as well give it a shot. She's quickly found her way onto my list of Taiwan favorites, and I'm excited to read/translate more. Hmm.

腹語術

我走錯房間

錯過了自己的婚禮.

在牆壁唯一的隙縫中, 我看見

一切行進之完好.  他穿白色的外套

她捧著花, 儀式,

許諾, 親吻

背著它: 命運, 我苦苦練就的腹語術

(舌頭那匹溫暖的水獸  馴養地

在小小的水族箱中  蠕動)

那獸說: 是的, 我願意.

ventriloquy

I went to the wrong room

and missed my own wedding.

through the only crack in the wall, I see

it all march on perfectly.   he wears a white tux

she carries flowers; ceremony,

promises, a kiss

carrying it: destiny, my hard-practiced ventriloquy

(tongue that warm water-beast   trained

in its tiny aquarium   squirming)

that beast speaks:  yes, I do.

----------------------

隱匿的王后和她不可見的城市

在她的國度, 一張

牽強附會的地圖.

出走的銅像不被履行的

遺書和諾言識破的陷阱

混淆的線索和消滅中的指紋以及

所有遺失的眼鏡和傘等

組成的國度.

她暗中畫著虛線, 無限

擴大的版圖.

一座分類詳盡的失物博物館, 好極了.

另外呢, 就是那些命運以及

歷史都還未曾顯現跡象的時刻吧

她草擬了秋天的徒步計劃 (目的不明

但將在每一個十字路口右轉)

寫好一個輕歌劇

餵了貓

寫了信

打一個蝴蝶結

在永不悔悟的心

the hidden empress and her unseen city

in her kingdom, one flat

map strains for interpretation.

a fleeing bronze statue, unfinished

deathbed notes and pitfalls seen through promises

mixed up clues and vanishing fingerprints, along with

all the lost glasses, umbrellas, and so on

these compose the kingdom.

in secret she paints dotted lines, a limitless

expanding territory.

a thoroughly catalogued Museum of Lost Things, wonderful.

besides, isn’t it all just the fates and

yet-unseen ciphers of history

she’s drawn up plans for the walking of autumn  (goals unclear

but will at every crossroads turn right)

written a light opera

fed the cat

scrawled the note

and tied up a butterfly knot

on this never-repenting heart

----------------------

偵探小說疏忽的細節

有人喜歡咳嗽有人更喜歡在音樂會裏

咳嗽尤其是協奏曲尤其是第2章節有人則忍住

(有人贊成壓抑) 至於噴嚏, 她說:

每當進入一個新的空間在最接近大門的

一張椅子上坐下來首先壓縮了椅墊和

椅墊間的空氣再以微微不安的姿勢振動椅背

我在心底深處發出一組鳴吧吧吧鳴

吧吧吧的調子如果此時有一些餅他就會

帶著餅進來以一種完全不知情的

神氣 (不知那些餅由何製成以及為何

帶餅而來) 然後我們就和好之類了

而在三度引用自己的警句之餘

仍然劇烈的成為方圓百哩內七個戴棒球小帽

中間的一個的他無礙宣佈了各類

不期然而達致的

親密關係的罅隙我在心底深處發出

嘎嘎嗚嗚啦的雜音在深處心底深處

完全我們互相彼此的瞭然所方出的幽微的

光, 的光, 的光

光就在空氣中啟動了最神秘的暗流並以

極深刻的謙遜姿態到達激起三至四個噴嚏

details overlooked in the detective novel

some people like to cough some people even more like at a concert

to cough especially if it’s a concerto especially in the 2^nd movement some people just hold back

(some people approve of oppression) as for sneezing, she says:

whenever entering a new place sit down atop the one chair nearest the main

entrance to first compress the air in the space between seat cushion and

seat cushion and then with slightly restless posture vibrate against the chairback

I from my heart-bottom’s deep place send out a birdcry crowd of ming ba ba ba ming

ba ba ba melodies if at this time there are some cookies he just will

carrying cookies enter wearing a kind of completely ingenuous

expression (unknowing where those cookies were produced and why

he came bearing cookies) and then we just are reconciled like so

and in 3D quoting the leftovers of my own admonitions

still fiercely becoming within a hundred meters seven wearing baseball caps

amidst them one he unimpeded declares all sorts of

unexpectedly brought expressions of

the rift of intimacy I from my heart-bottom’s deep place send out

honk honk hoot hoot nonsense static from my deep place heart-bottom’s deep place

complete we mutually each other watch then from all directions emits a faint

light, a light, a light

a light in the air starts the most mysterious undercurrent and then with

an extremely deep modest posture arrives stirring up three to four sneezes

Gosh-darn Earth, Always Spinning and Whatnot

Haven't posted in too long! Been busy with many fun things - including starting to study the Taiwanese dialect. Superawesomefun. Anyway, here's a poem from Shen Zhifang, currently a professor in the Chinese department at Tunghai University in Taichung, Taiwan. Kind of a light-hearted poem, neat idea, bumped into it today and figured I'd give it a go. I'm not head-over-heels for this one, but I'm definitely interested in checking out more of his stuff. 不敢入睡的原因 對，一切都是因為 地球自轉的關係 先是我好疲倦的躺在床上，床好疲倦的躺在 地球上，我們一起準備入睡。因為地球自轉 的關係，月光開始一寸一寸把我推醒 推我向地球那頭，一寸一寸，滑落 地球就翻過來睡在床上，床就翻過來睡在我 敏感單薄的背上，壓得脊椎與聲帶咯咯作響 ……我不敢吵醒別人 我不敢入睡。我怕啊我怕一不小心睡著了 地球和床和我將立刻向無底的宇宙墜落 －－那，那所有的連續劇怎麼辦？ 等待繼續曝光的各種內幕怎麼辦？ 已經高價買進的大筆股票怎麼辦怎麼辦？ 我不敢入睡。為了所有人美麗的明天 趴在床上奮力支撐地球的重量，直到 唉天亮 一切絕對是 該死的,地球自轉的關係 -沈志方 Why I Won't Sleep Yes, it’s all because of the earth’s turning. First I, exhausted, lay atop the bed – the bed, exhausted, lays atop the earth, and together we prepare for sleep. Because of the earth’s turning, the moonlight starts to inch by inch shake me awake, pushing me towards the earth, inch by inch, slipping, until the earth turns to sleep atop the bed, the bed turns to sleep atop my frail, sensitive back, pressing out creaking cracks from my spine and throat …but I musn’t wake the others. I will not sleep. I fear, ah, I fear if I fall asleep, carelessly, earth and bed and I will fall out into that bottomless universe --and, and then what would become of the soap operas? What of all the news stories waiting to break? What of all the high-priced stocks, yet unsold? I will not sleep. For everyone’s beautiful tomorrow, I’ll press against my bed and prop up the weight of this earth, until (oh!) daybreak. It’s definitely all because of the earth’s goddamned turning. -Shen Zhifang, t. Rob Voigt