Hai An
(China)
ELEGY (Excerpts)
Chinese Poet Hai An, has been working on ELEGY, a therapeutic long poem, for over 25 years. The poem starts with a meditation on his experience of pain and anxiety alongside his desire for peace and tranquility, enacting a struggle to emerge “from the shadow of death” and “enter the palace of wisdom”, going beyond an expression of individual pain and values to one of deep care for humankind’s collective suffering. While crying out against his own personal misfortune, he simultaneously insists that writing must seek to bring relief to other suffering souls, convinced of the long poem’s ability to soothe others’ heartache and forge bridges of empathy among and between people. Images of disease repeat throughout the poem as chanted lines in East Asian cultures, enacting a kind of exorcism and self-therapy. As he writes in the poem’s preface, though “disease and death may darken life’s sky at any time, poetry has a unique ability to traverse time and space: whether in light or through darkness, rejoicing or in sorrow, hope or despair, poetry can be medicine that dissolves pain, purifies the soul, and taps into a source of vitality that can bring one back to living life, stoking the inner courage needed to confront darkness, and to separate light from darkness.”
1. Prologue
The first blood flows deep from vessels within, to flood yet another world
Flooding the seasons, from end to beginning, again and again
The first cry hits blunt teeth
The tongue far from its source, and the heart yet farther still
The first tears efface the gaze
Overflowing trenches, boundary channels, and personal alienation
The first day’s biopsy determines everything
The first intracranial imbalance…
I am lying in my human bed, sick and facing death
Earth, a whole blood corpuscle of the universe
Day by day, exhausts all its energies
Rivers and lakes form deep within the face
Carved by floods of blood and tears
Climate mourning over land and sea
Modern humans, we lose land, our ends, our bare courage
Mourning is deep suffering, throbbing in every blood cell
World! I have tasted enough of my own blood!
Time bleeds into hell!
Without thinking without living
Hand grasping the old doorframe fated
Looking back at my visitors, needle stab pains in the arm
No matter whatever busy weeks, business undone
Whatever discarded images
There is a storm arising whenever it wants
There is one’s own portion of ill fortune…
Bare life, the terror being barely alive!
Unspeakable pain!
Extensive bleeding, yet the will to beat despair in the distance
Beyond words, bargaining, deep prayer
Beyond love and random ruin
From dry inflammation, through red palace walls
From one district to another
From flooded river bank to surging shore
To die proves an art, a scene from the matter at hand
2. The Childhood
Childhood is a gathering, where a river meets sea
Shifting dreams of rice and wheat in flower
Pain’s dragon. A ridge of undulating dunes
A child walked the embankment, iron hoe in hand
Past a grave, through a grove of oleander
Ideals unfurling over the billowing wheat
Crepe myrtles bloom purple to the sea’s edge
Birds flocked over the White Pagoda of his hometown
Toward the estuary, toward the whirlpool
The teen too swept over the waters in his mind
Stars reel in a vision in the rain
A flash of rusting ironware, girls and seeds
Such a flight in flame, such a flame in flight
Penetrating into darkness like the teen’s eyes
And human suffering rose in his body
Teenage poetry vivid in the perilous season
The grass withered, the fountain dried up
The genius of teen years short-lived
The sun set in dusk
A fallen bird, a singing flute and scattering wheat awn
The teen lost on a muddy path.
The wind coughing in the cold winter
The youth in full bloom, deep in the field
The teenage in flight in the sun
The sky full of fears
His poetry grew with the night
One change after another, he stood still on an arrow
A beacon of truth in his hand
Illuminated an empty skull, a lonely tear of mankind
3. Youth’s Flight
The moment of youth’s flight, lighting a flame in the heart
The fire let the world realize its own position.
I bear that soil, provisions and salt
Bear up under social alienation and indifference
With these human wounds, dust like a drum
Beyond the roughness of our souls
Beyond that child with the sunset of hometown in his dull eyes
I crossed the sun-scorched stone cottage
The bronze or stone stature
And the weak imagination of humankind
In the rainy season I fell in love or hurt a girl
Her heart turned into a cloud, into a drop of rain
I held a drop clinging to a piece of iron until it fell into the yard
Can this rain bring back that aura in the coming year?
I loved the rain, loved the sky I passed through in the rain,
Spreading the seeds of happiness along the road
Spring rain appearing as the phantom of my tomorrow
With a banner of beauty
The end of the earth forever extended the deep blue of the ocean
Forever extended youth
The prairie and its charging horses
Forever extended a thousand years of hunger
A pair of invisible hands holding his head all over the world
In summer, I was reclining with her on the meadow
Various kinds of green grass, two or three trees
Failed in the end to grow into a scene of the summer
In autumn, I was more in love with the daybreak body of my love
My sense of touch was bathed in desire of love
Touched the depths of her desire
As the endless tremor of a river
My thoughts walked along my lover’s eyes
As roaming in the waters
Her hand went deep into my bones.
My chest flooded in the rain all night
I came close to my lover’s heart
Listened to the expanse of love
Listened to life, inseparable from earth
And a huge cloud of suffering in the dark
Invaded my body without a sound
At this moment, I approached a tower of knowledge
Each floor of the tower held the deposition of history
A pale face attracted by an enchanting masterpiece
The base is the shrine where those in hunger worship
The higher I went, the thinner the air
The denser my desire
More to the spire, more taboo there
My youth set on the high altar of sacrifice
I approached to the depths of hell, suffering deepening
4. In the Winter of December
I finally fell down in December, a snow-swept winter
The wheel of fate devoured all desires and achievements
Grave was the sin of life
The earth died before mankind
A primitive force repeated death
A horse galloping over it
“One, two, three, to the mountains,
Please call a red ambulance. ”
The jaundice patient in the next bed, pale as death
His blind eyes open
As a dark light, swept the sky
Light reflecting his oblique skull
A bunch of stone toes
A shadow jumping from the window to the heaven
A smile of despair
I finally fell down in December, a snow-frozen winter
Grain away from the straw
Genius echoless away from the skull
Survival was the human garden of no harvest
A piece of silence
A bird in flight in darkness
“One, two, three, all aboard,
Pick you up, ferry on the oars.”
The hull took in the shell and his last crazy words
In the birth or the vanish of season
Only I chanted in a low voice
Only a wandering poet
Grabbed her own hair, trekking on the river
Only I chanted the decay and renewal of one generation
I finally fell down in December, a river-frozen winter
I finally fell down into the river in the snowy winter of December
5. The Face in Flash
A face of mine flashed up on several mirrors
A shadow of thought flashed into my mind
Time hoarded its emptiness
My memory switched the door open
I trod on daytime, on the broken time
I walked along the season
My gum went bleeding
My mouth smelled of sweet, poisoned with sugar.
I remained merely the shell of my body.
Machines kept sustaining my life
None of my sight crossed the pass of mixed time
The face in flash repeated none but a name
None but just a letter for words
None but just a memory
None but just a future
Life, always another kind of existence, remained forever in the sky
I lived beyond my body, beyond you and me
Boundless is the dark night
I lost my space, my position and my sense of hearing
Except for a cough, ceaseless in my throat
Who exactly am I?
All of behaviors waved goodbye to my inner will
The face in flash suffered from the punishment of the original sin
Or compensated an emotional disorder
A family or a clan of sins
A nation of deposited defilement
6. Reincarnation
The wind was swooping in her heart to beat her breast
Sadness, as a mad woman, found no gap for a cry
But to fondle the giant wound at the bedside
The sky was grey
Outside the gate extended a cold piece of land
A blizzard was blasting a drift of snow toward the roof
An involuntary sadness and sorrow hunting
Toward the hereditary family
Women, lest lighting up to lose the hope to pray for
For fear of the clear magic at a glance in the light
For fear of touching the suffering
A gust of wind from the estuary
Brought back the sad news again
From the blood, from generation to generation
Who will break away from the misery?
Who finally forgives the bedridden child?
And my daughter was coming to me through the womb’s darkness
She opened her eyes of the morning glow
Her sensual face, half of light, half of water
Came up against the wind
To the proximal end or far from my disillusionment
In the last afterglow of my life
Completed my eternal life cycle
At the moment when the sky drew to a close
Generations of clan, generations of crude soul
A family cemetery ever set
For the death
Life ever face to face the death
The other side of the light would be the boundless darkness forever
Let me take all your misery
To bury me in the land of my countryside, along with lovely crops
To retain or nourish the lost blood of generation
Let my soul take its way on a snowy night
Residing in the wood or surging in the water
Or profound into infinity
At the moment to take the genesis
Take a recombinant life of light and dark
7. Between Birth and Death
None but across the ocean, the shore fulfilled its final ending
Sank the annihilated fin of the shark
Birth and death stretched their hands, the sea still on the horizon
Amphioxus swam to the end of annals
Trees stood afar, love hanging full branch
Even now smashes the sun, unable to warm the shell of thought
An anchor of five living fingers
Anchored the last light in the heart
A boat afloat in the world
Too far to closer, too close to farther
Where does the soul sail to? Where is the hometown?
Can love burn to the reverse of reality?
The sunshine ashore lighted up the growth of human beings
Lighted up crape myrtles in bloom in childhood
Time spreads smoothly without waves
The other shore was the embrace of a different happiness
The imperishable lighthouse kept watching the channel at night
Refuse to create a style of life or death
Half alive or half dead
Spring tides echoing the king fish
Let the soul off the body, resist the temptation of shore
Destined to be alone, suffered from sufferings
Where does the soul sail to? Where is the hometown?
Can love penetrate into the real heart?
8. I Emerged from the Cage of Disease
At this moment, I emerged from the cage of disease
My heart shrank as the residency
My skull sacrificed in a cave of worship
Faced with beautiful fresco from time immemorial
I stepped into a new world
With discarded desire and great care
Along the fissure to search for the trace of water
A resonating growl
A lamp for advance
A pregnant season with truth
God’s will rehearsed in the vast sky
At this moment, I emerge from the cage of disease
The cloudy weather
Reminds me of the wheels in exile, bumpy all the way
Little by little away from the waves, from the vast expanse of water
I want to hijack the inner soul
Clad in free-beaten fire
Rush to the virgin forest, to the land in misery
A kind of rhythm
A flight in darkness
A conflict across the rock floor at twilight
The new flame spreads with dawn over the land
At this moment, I emerge from the cage of disease
Life bursts into flames once again
The blood free from the vessel
Out of a heavy siege time breaks
A storm burns loneliness out
A poem buried in December
Humans have sent away the last element of painful land
9. Resurrection
At this moment of beauty, vast and boundless
I rise up by myself, glorious and magnificent
The door of life opens the eyes of dawn
Let me look at the authentic face of the world.
Let me look at the world tonight
In order to see the bread, the water and the air
I try hard to move on
I despise death in the world
I write poetry to renew my limited life
At this moment of beauty, vast and boundless
I rise up by myself, glorious and magnificent
The imagination beats faster than my heart.
In the distance rise the mountains
No crying, no sorrow
Once receded moisture returns to my body and soul
Newborn desire flows throughout the vessel
My bones moved with flaming fire and spewing water
My ears heard of horse’s neighing and lion’s roaring
At this moment of beauty, vast and boundless
I rise up by myself, glorious and magnificent
The wind sends a signal in the sky
I throw back the abyss of death
Raising up great youth, waves and salts
To separate light from darkness
I am the self-burning flame on earth
Penetrating and melting everything
I swallow twinkling light, wandering everywhere
Transcending time and space, transcending rays of century
I have flown over the paradise of Bluebird, reaching the origin of life
I have crossed Styx, grasping the meaning of life
At the moment of alternate light and darkness
I feel the god of death in full retreat
At the end of the sky echoes an infinite voice
—Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow is your resurrection day!
© Trans. by the author & David Perry
____________________________________________
HAI AN, originally named LI Ding-Jun, Chinese scholarly-poet and translator, the winner of STA-2016 Translation Achievement Award issued by the Shanghai Translator Association, has been serving as the Associate Professor of English at College of Foreign Languages and Literature, as well as the member of Sino-Australian Creative Writing Center/ Literary Translation Research Center, The Fudan University. He has published ten books of poetry as the author, translator and editor, including Selected Poems by Hai An, Elegy—Hai An’s First Therapeutic Long Poem, Selected Poems of Dylan Thomas, Collected Poems of Samuel Beckett, A Centennial Collected Papers on Sino-Occidental Poetry Translation, The Frontier Tide: Contemporary Chinese Poetry. He was once invited to attend several international poetry festivals, such as the 15th International Poetry Festival in Rosario, Argentina (2007), the 48th International Poetry Evenings in Struga, Macedonia (2009) and the International Poetry Festival of Mihai Eminescu in Craiova, Romania (2014).