—中译外—————

三、张枣的诗（13首）……………………………Michelle Yeh, John Cayley等译

1. In The Mirror
2. Gently Swinging
3. Early Spring February
4. Choir
5. Motherland Miscellany
6. The Condemned and His Path
7. Chef
8. Edge
9. In the Forest
10. Hair Salon: Eyes Only or Long Shot
11. A Key for C.R.
12. Song Sung Drunk
13. Father

张枣 (1962-2010)
湖南长沙人。著名诗人，学者和诗歌翻译家。文学激情燃烧的20世纪80年代初，少年张枣顶着诗歌的风暴入川，二十诗章惊海内，以《镜中》、《何人斯》等作品一举成名，成为著名的“巴蜀五君子”之一。诗人柏桦说，他20出头写出的《灯芯绒幸福的舞蹈》，就足以让他的同行胆寒。他精确而感性的诗艺，融合和发明中西诗意的妙手，一直风靡无数诗歌爱好者。

In the Mirror

only if she recalls every regret in her life

will plum blossom fall and fall

say, seeing her swim to the riverbank

say, climbing up a pinewood ladder

dangerous things are lovely, no doubt

but no match for seeing her mounted homecoming

blushing in shame.

bowing her head, answering the king

a mirror waits for her forever

it allows her to sit at the place she always sits in the mirror

gazing out of the window: only if she recalls every regret in her life

will plum blossom fall and fall across Southern Mountain.

[BH, LMK]

Gently Swinging

Attic, language lab.

Autumn arrives with a bang,

bright and clear, changed for the new glass of the universe on four walls,

everybody wearing headphones properly, expressions uniform as jade.

The pregnant teacher is listening too. Blurred sound’s

feathery fragments of the classics:

Evening News, Evening News, the tape fast-forwards, whistling noisily

round the world.

Nervous words unwilling to pass away, like streetscape and

fountains, like extraterrestrials standing on some brink,

fiddling with the sunset glow, abruptly they unload a bolt of brocade:

emptiness less than a flower!

She takes a look at the new pattern

around her, a loom in everyone’s mouth,

muttering the exact same

good story.

Everyone is immersed in listening intently,

everyone baring vital organs, working –

total awareness.

[BH]

Early Spring February

the sun used to shine on me; in Chongqing one drop of

dew’s early mood enveloping images one by one

I bypass stretch after stretch of air; the railway hurts

trains till they flee the light, cuckoo’s light song left behind

I say, hello peaks, and parasol trees, pine and cypress too

height regardless, please let me love as if in secret

in Hunan, sun shining in the eyes of my childhood

my hands grew up, the gently fondled road was shortened

dust around the city whirls and dances round and round

horn like a brother, car wheels a kaleidoscope

teething pain changes into the scars on my backside

fruit presses me to the tree, mercilessly knocks me

down. Oh, I still can feel that I am alive today

alive in a phony place made out of paper; spring

clucks and coos, sun prods all over like a quack doctor

prods at these up-front or could it be these deferred

times, prods and prods at the utopia of this world

oh, shun the hidden sage, useless as a rotten rope

[BH]

Choir

a choir warm on latitudes and longitudes

tongues of young girls fresh from the bath

like magician’s roses conjured out of thin air

who are they presented to? who are they a gift for?

head, leaven the bread of my soul

little poplars, open the roaring heat inside me

raise it up, over-arching you, like straddling a

defifinition; oh, the numinous diffificulty

of those handy disposable notes

the girls are leading me to eat ashes

at the end of the universe, ah, the pasture of the void

Wednesday passes on the baton

but some wolfifish thing with the heart and lungs of a dog

is howling, reverberating

relentlessly mouthing fallen May

1992  [BH, WNH]

Motherland Miscellany

what’s overflowing and running down, it’s not booze

that’s not yet a cherry pit, spat out with no more flesh on it than a corpse

the boy at the bottom of the well, people still salvaging stuff

till the middle of the night, till suffocation, only then an

empty bottle fallen to earth from the cloud’s mouth, unbroken

will humans still tolerate me passing through the lobby

passing through the sexy silence of typewriters

what’s been spilled is still not

the moon’s face installed on the water and beaten

black and blue; captain, oh your wicked women

haven’t opened the window of the water yet. But I’ve begun to lick

I’m licking the bright clothes in the air

I’m licking the little brocade streamers pressed between the feet

of the pages; till licking is swapped for being licked

I’d rather be licked all life long, never wanting to live a life

[BH]

The Condemned and His Path

From the capital to the weedy barrens,

broad sea, blank sky boundless, and my head

locked in a pillory, my voice

hog-tied, bellflowers on a thousand field-paths

disclose death –

a meaning crowned for the walker

on a long road and a far journey;

I walk and walk;

death is inevitable: this is certainly

not politics. Thirsty, I

sketch a tiny forest spirit;

her bouncing breasts, a fresh and tender unfamiliarity,

running across the never-named current,

while the razor-like fawn

restrains the clear brittle shade;

if I couldn’t sleep,

I would aesthetically assume

I was making sleep sleep,

deeply and soundly;

if I feared, if I feared,

I would presumably think

I was already dead, I’d

made death die, and also had

taken away everything I’d been seeing:

the proletarian flavour of the discolouring scenery,

restaurants, ferries, kingfishers,

a few lands of abundance in the provinces,

a few slovenly hookers shuffling mahjong tiles,

a few fierce tigers banished from humans by humans,

thrown aside like worn-out socks,

and the distant shadows of pagodas,

even further away, there’s that tiny forest fairy,

elegant, floating and lingering, a little mother you can call by

her baby name, her world flowing with fragrance

same as everybody else,

the dream of someone going to their death,

the dream of the meta-human,

it’s impure, like pure poetry.

1994 [BH, LMK, WNH]

Chef

The future is a chill blast from inside a body plundered

and passed, the overturned vinegar bottle permeates tendon and bone.

The chef pushes the door open, sees twilight, like a little girl,

using the tip of its tongue to feel all around for the light switch.

Inside there’s peacock-like specificity,

on the ceiling a few balloons, still living a kind of life:

the chef endures the suddenness. He cuts the tofu in two,

slices it an inch thick, puts it into the applauding pan of oil,

fries both sides golden-yellow;

then changes to another pan,

stir-fries a bit of smashed ginger, mince, and bright red bean-paste,

imports the tofu; adds a little millet-wine, MSG and water,

lets it soak in to become a soft secrecy,

at this point, sprinkle on some diced spring onion and it’s ready to serve!

The chef invents this reality because of some dream,

heavy snow whirling outside, looking for a name.

From the depth of his aching tooth, the sky is slowly

drawing away that little floral dress.

From myopia lenses, the past leaks out like sperm.

Superlatively the chef sticks

his head out of the window, the recipe cools down into a bridge

toward the altogether unacknowledged fields. He listens, listens:

truly, someone is making this dish, and putting

this mouthwatering bait into the dark night backyard.

Two ‘Nos’ are on the run in the fiction of the times,

like two little tongue beasts, emitting hot air,

grappling with each other on the ice-bound river surface…

1995 [BH, LMK]

Edge

Like the tomato hiding on the edge of a steelyard, he’s always

lying down. Whatever flashes over, a warning or a swallow, he

is rock steady, on guard beside the little thing. The second hand moves to

ten o’clock sharp, and the alarm clock quietly leaves, a cigarette

has also left, carrying pairs of blue handcuffs

his eyes, clouds, German locks. Anyhow, what’s not here

has all gone.

Emptiness, getting bigger. He is distant, but there’s always

some edge; on the edge of the cog, the edge of the water, edge of

himself. Every so often he looks at the sky, forefinger up, practising fine,

thin, but frantic calligraphy: ‘Come back!’

It’s true, those who lost their shape have reverted to that original shape:

New Zone windows are full of wind, the moon dipped in a lager barrel,

the steelyard, abruptly tilting, there, infinite

as a pacified lion

flat out beside the tomato.

[BH, LMK, WNH]

In the Forest

1

A few default matters of yours,

like thunderclouds, they call you to the hilltop.

Gliders of falling leaves,

a few small distant parachuting question marks wriggle and gently fall into

the bottleneck of scenery. It seems somebody in the weather is performing

a mathematical calculation.

You burn with anxiety.

Rings of the bell, rings of the bell throw headless golden armour

into the depths of the forest. There, mist

is operating in the corner of the Autumn wind, starting up

a discarded picture,

a warm generator room shaped like the insides of an alarm clock.

There, you walk about.

2

You walk about, as if the forest isn’t in the forest.

Like an urgent long-distance call, squirrels split open the forest paths.

Listen: Something’s wrong.

The sky is filled up with floating malfunctions,

a plaza has been reversed.

You replace the handset, maple leaves all over you.

Mushrooms, they twist the bronze screws even tighter –

making a china shop inlay itself in the fresh green of Freiheitstrasse,

making the shadows that are detectives for death

tag along in.

They shoot a glance at the zeros on the invoice;

their bodies segment and hop one-legged through the revolving door.

They turn right, and point vaguely at

the forest on the other shore.

A misty butterfly effect.

At noon, flowing water plays the flute.

The bright and clean expression of porcelain, a ballet of many delicate poses.

They say: smash it. We say nothing.

3

You’re on the rampage.

That receipt is clasped right in your hand,

you want to redeem your pawned shadow.

The forest turns dark, raindrops strike the keyboard of dense leaves,

and you’re lost. Yet

hope is always on the left. Leftward,

there, the abstract man mute and silent on the road sign,

he gives you a little nod;

green, staying on and waiting in the tree trunk like a mother,

flimsily tweaking the precise cogs.

Woodpeckers, working while they’re talking,

circles and circles of sound waves rippling in time and tide.

Woodpeckers, permeating the whole forest, and

Monday.

4

A circle of open ground.

There, the long distance runner is repairing his breath machine.

His thirst opens up a treeful of red apples,

their scent lifts and floats into the Golden Bell Tower, returning reality

or letting it slip away.

He feels deeply alone because of his thirst. He bends his head to polish

his warm palm: it seems to be a train station,

a hubbub of voices. A bunch of kids off to a picnic splash skeins of

crazily dappled spouting water.

Light, it sends a pointsman-like shadow to stand at the crossroads.

He feels he’s got from the universe, for the first time, a pair of hands, and

violence.

1 January 1996, Tübingen [BH]

Hair Salon: Restricted Access or Long Shot

1

Small town in the south. Sultry as Utopia.

Electric fans blowing everybody’s bones all fluttery,

but no one can fall apart. On a little stone bridge,

two or three tourists point at the landscape, one

a northern taxman on the run from his criminal past.

2

I’m someone with plenty of aliases too,

I’m stifling a fit of laughter, my chopsticks reach for the Drunken Prawns.

The emptiness of the empty air is so churned up it’s utterly broken.

The boss’s sixty-fourth mask has opened its mouth,

and what it says is the usual enigma: ‘Cleanliness,

I’m its slave – because it’s in plain view,

because it knows no limits –

you have to constantly clear up behind it’.

A woman interrupts: ‘Our boss

is a good man. One time I was looking out from upstairs

and I saw he was kneeling in the middle of the road, drunk,

rolling up his sleeves to fold the zebra crossing and take it home’.

3

I go to sleep on a rush mat but wake up beside the rockery.

Butterflies usher in the future, but duplicate some Ming dynasty

morning. On a day like this, you only need to feel out of sorts

from head to foot to know the future is on its way;

you only need to feel alone, and then you know

everything’s gone completely wrong, and there’s no way to change it.

At a moment of dead calm, only when the wind suddenly blows upstream,

does it stand you up, and like someone in a rage, you leap forward,

tear the paper, as your true name –

an ambulance singing like cicadas – hurtles toward you.

[BH, WNH]

A Key for C.R.

Million-ton darkness. We’re going home, clothes swollen with the west wind.

A glass of water is isolated on the bookcase.

Hidden in the great vastness, swallows

aim their migration at a single tiny cent a thousand miles away,

while we’re locked into the memory of the mountain shadow outside the room.

Your nakedness fills the verandah,

and all around us, the black magnet’s night like a meditator attracts

emptiness. A key is sucking in the world.

An airmail letter delivered in error passes back and forth between you and me.

‘Big’, it whispers, ‘big’.

The flames leap up: ah, the letter, endlessly growing,

it presses us to live inside.

You’re drunk and you throw up, I’m thinking long and hard about writing

a reply,

and my shadow is holding two sheets of paper, as if

I’m stretching my indebted and lopsided wings.

1996 [BH]

Song Sung Drunk

Last night, as the party lurched and wobbled and drifted leftward, the booze

was so sweet it began to bow down low. Live prawns of notes

spurt-strolled from the cello, and then, pitter-patter,

stood to attention in Booze Wonderland, asking if anyone was starting a

revolution.

There was a fat guy weeping and taking a string of firecrackers from his

inside pocket,

but nobody was paying any attention. Hey! Don’t close in so far away,

the seven or eight of you, don’t swing your hair back and forward,

don’t let the teapot’s liberated zone shatter and flood out.

Don’t bow down low to me (under the table the deer goes ‘doh!’)

There was a Party official type on tiptoe, raising a glass, with

pocket-money snout, telling foreign guests to ‘Eat cock!’ 39

The booze laughed before it happened. I kept on drifting leftward, so was

I the fat guy? No way could the string of bangers catch fire.

My mind was a thousand miles away, declaiming in an empty phone box.

Could a hit man have come as contracted? The world

showed its blue tail, with only a sodden towel

passed over here, an empty boat turning back through the cold waves.

Oh, falling down left and right, let us from the body of it

refine another Manchuria, a motorway

leading to variations on svelte and slender, leading to the seven or eight of you.

Your name was Emerald, but you disappeared for a while, or maybe

as you dialled your mobile you were feeding the stone lions

to call the empty phone box a thousand miles away.

(Her boyfriend promised to wait there for her call,

but he didn’t come, so she was imagining her own illusory ‘there’.)

She came back here, collapsed all over us, as if

it was all hyacinths at the other end. An old chancer swayed over

to toast somebody. Character was dripping from everyone’s

finger-ends, the fat guy’s firecrackers stayed unlit, so

someone chucked his lighter away. ‘My mind’,

the fat guy spat, ‘is very very clear – no – Our’

the fat guy slapped himself, ‘Our Imperial Mind knows what’s what’.

The hit man grew softer. Outside, ice sealed in the news.

‘Left, left,’ the fat guy helped the hit man into the toilet.

The hit man kissed his absence like he was kissing the chin of the King of China

Oh, King of China! Absent, like the hit man. But me, like the

fat guy, again and again I bowed down low before The Will of Heaven; or maybe I

was that drunk, a thousand miles away, by chance beside the phone box,

hearing it ring, ambling over, but falling behind the silence.

The drunk waited by the empty phone box, singing, oh singing, oh:

‘Oh far away, oh, far away, you’ve got an abstract of this place’.

[BH, WNH]

Father

In 1962 he didn’t know what he could do. He

was still young, very idealistic, pretty leftish, but

carrying the name of a rightist. He’d escaped home to

Changsha from Xinjiang, puffy with hunger. His granny made him

a pot of tripe and turnip soup, with red dates floating in it.

Incense was burning in the room – a snare rising upward with its smell.

That day he really was at his wits’ end.

He wanted to go out for a stroll, but not very much.

He stared at things he couldn’t see, laughed out loud.

His granny gave him a cigarette and he smoked it, his first.

He said that in the dispersing rings of smoke were the words ‘Monstrous,

Absurd’.

At midday he thought he might go and sit a while on Tangerine Island,

to practise the flute.

He walked and walked, then didn’t want to go there any more,

but following the road back he suddenly felt:

there are always two selves,

one going forward in obedience,

one going forward in disobedience,

one sitting on a bolt of brocade, whistling a song,

and this other one walking on May Day Avenue, walking in an unperishable

truth.

He thought: it’s good now, everything’s just fine!

He stopped. He turned around. He walked towards Tangerine Island again.

With that turn, he alerted an alarm clock at the edge of the sky.

With that turn, he messed up every rhythm on earth.

With that turn, the road was filled with miracles, and

he became my father.

[BH]