——中译外——


二、胡冬的诗（3首）……………………... Michelle Yeh, John Cayley等译




胡冬
胡冬（1962-），四川成都人。“莽汉主义”诗歌运动发起人之一。
代表作品有《我想乘上一艘慢船到巴黎去》。





Your Esteemed Daughter

1
out of that obese foreign land –
the number one nightmare, the dream person that sickens you –
wake up, stand up, walk on tiptoe

beyond carnality.

like an entire House of Pleasure appearing out of nowhere, drowned
in light,
she reassembles her openly-displayed soft jewels:

a photograph album, a necklace, a candlelit night –
just eighteen years old. the grimace of a moth before the flame
disguises

her Daddy Floodwater

she opens up, an unexpected present
possibly the tip of a breaking wave, possibly a teetering treasure ship,
possibly a scattering and re-grouping

of Spring swallows holding in their beaks our childhood’s twin beds,
whispering
a vast river of lost words…the cat’s become the Kitchen God,
the Superior Man a slut:

you, Father of the Book of Change,
do you know where her heart has been, or what thing has caught her
fancy, or who
she has been fondling at night’s edge, under starry skies?
in the stuttering kaleidoscope – like water lilies, one by one, thoughts
rise and fall.

divine eyes as lovely as the abacus beads

2
your wish to uncover the ups and downs of our exploits is like
finding in this poem

a tree
(intolerable ardour)

its imaginary leaves guide us toward
the ocean that
you enseeded – multi-faceted tumbling prisms.

from the moment its falling sounds out, it urg—
es us on: differing flowers on the same tree…
or different fruit from the same flower,

drifting to heaven’s heart, the Pole Star, shrinking.

3
the set rules of the puzzle: tiny stepping-stones;
the gravitational pull of its solution: star-clans in the water-butt.

you dip-and-write. the best and worst of words
depend on

the slough of your good mood, the white chalk of stars on the tip
of your nose, the snow on your baldy pate.

Come Summer Solstice, we go to the country, loaf about and wonder.

we carve roses on the pens that fence in the chickens and goats,
your smile –

the Red Boy spitting fire, the immortals somersaulting;
made a fool of on New Year’s Eve, no different to country folk, we
repeat
their country folk’s tales.

[BH, WNH]



Frog, Cicada, Moth

The ten-million-year rotation of words, like seething swarms
of tadpoles, is because the ever-reflecting mirror of illusionary change
integrates previous lives with generations to come, and where lights
shine in darkness,
reflecting Chengdu…Pool of a Hundred Blossoms.
A frog is calling: change! But I hope I can change,
the Goddess of Creation makes the mouth-organ reeds loudly sound,
then delivers breath and sound, ladder-like,
tuning the pitch of the sun higher, suspending multi-coloured stones
in the air.

Famine year after famine year, blank talk blossoms on racially disturbed
tongues. The shell of scorching childhood pain splits
– a dream, an electric fan, a desolate
siesta, winding around a cyclically-repeating tree.
A cicada is singing: change! Now I really am changing,
then the Moon Goddess crosses a thousand miles, then preparing the feast,
encouraging each other, singing instead of howling –
in the wax and wane of lunar virtue, sharing clarity and perfection.

Change, isn’t it just weaving sadness on the shuttle
between lips and teeth colliding? And the generations increase and multiply,
and every strand of the tapestry of the landscape of the will inherits
limits: alpha and omega –
a moth is flying: change! I can only change again,
immortal Moon Goddess never then exhausted, only then living in utter
aloneness,
yet uncaring of who the tuning pegs of time
’s chaos cast aside, or who they hold.

[BH, LMK]






The Royal We

My sun fades behind the western hills; I used to be an early riser.
Under the Imperial Canopy my unclean form used to be
passed out drunk in the front row – hundreds at my beck, thousands at my call.
The Plume-Gathering Pontifex sank into the wilderness; the football flflew high
in the air.
The prince in fact changed his spots (taking the name of Mountainfoot)
What impediment was it to me if commoners came and went from their
own front doors?
But over and over I dreamed of nesting ants starting fifires,
and suddenly I thought of ennobling my very own kicker of a horse.

An unbroken line of twilight on cliff carvings. Lotus blossom in the bronze vase
sent out pollen alarms: her Rainbow Skirt, burned by foot-soldiers, composed
a cloud’s fifilthy array.34 Lychees turned white-headed;
night’s veins gunmetal-blue – how could these be her fault?
To pursue the royal stag still tempts, by god! (taking the name of Mountainside)
witness this yourself, and go on witnessing! Ambitious blood rises with the tide.
Sacrififice a kidney. The Barefoot Immortal, reluctant to live as a hermit,
ran the risk of turning himself into a masterstroke.35

The night was cool as water; my eyes, like the sodden eyes
of fifish, goggled at shields: Oh, Buddha, Zhuangzi’s wife, who evaded
the comb, lifted the sheep’s foot.36 To love me is
to forgive me, to leak out from places that shouldn’t leak.
Poetry doesn’t gush out in an uproar (taking the name of Mountaintop)
nor the missile strike the bulls-eye of the mistake of all mistakes – Dancer:
turn into the snake inside the flflute player’s cold jar, be a satiated
rainbow. The snake has length enough to reach back to Paradise.

I’m bursting with dawn’s energy, a carbuncle without pain. In
the highest height, who has smiled, seeing without limits? This conjunction
of Sun and Moon can’t prevent me continuing to scale
the nameless peaks framed by my window. Like some Emperor of every other day
fondling the globe, (taking the name of Holy Land of China)
this rebel chief sounds his shinbone flflute. Ah, escape to anywhere – it’s all
the same. Thick drifts of locust tree leaves in the palace, now day’s shining
cobwebs
stick ten thousand nightmares on him, the King in Yellow is ready to run.

[BH, WNH]


34. (See opposite page.) The Rainbow Skirt and Feather Dress is a piece of music by Emperor Tang Minghuang (712-756), to accompany a dance of the same name reformed by his beloved concubine Yang Guifei. Their love affair and her death in 751 at the hands of, yet again, the imperial guards, is the subject of a famous poem by Bai Juyi, The Song of Undying Sorrow.
35. The Barefoot Immortal was incarnated as Emperor Song Renzong(1022-63), in answer to the previous emperor’s prayers for a son.
36. This reference to Zhuangzi’s wife (via Buddha and a sheep’s foot) is so cryptic, the editors admit defeat.