Xiao Hai
(China)
PASTORALE
In the place I labor
I cast a calculating eye
Down each row of crops
People catch sight of me
In my own planted acre
Laboring until the sky darkens
The sun without a by-your-leave
Has been frightened off by darkness
Yet in the dark I make out shapes
Because it is my nighttime habit
To persist a little longer
Before I feel my way back home
Along an unseen path
This leached-out plot remains here
Its paleness that shows through the gloom
Is the aftermath of extraction
And this will be my life’s illumination
In the end it denies me sight of anything
And by estrangement I become
The fruit of its pinched hunger
My thoughts desert this piece of land
I know a change is going to come
With hopeless expectation inside me
I submit to the final tide of night
That rolls against my planted ground
VILLAGE (#3)
The resumption of normal life
Is like a village after a holocaust
But giants tread this village
The land makes new arrangements in spring
But I am the widower among all widowers
I have a diversion canal from the river to call my own
Sometimes I push upstream to the west
But the torrent sweeps me back to a further village
I stay alive in a crowd of liars
Ah Holocaust! You have made sure
I will be your inheritor
As I submit to being a man and parent
Because I woke early one morning
To cough up fragrance and confessions
Headier than nighttime,
With strength to outlast its ravages
VILLAGE (#15)
Each time I walk past the headman’s house
An empty feeling steals up on me
Dutiful sinner, knee awaiting judgment
Jaded horse of feeble faith
In which the village nonetheless puts its trust
(Wraiths hurrying ahead of a thunderstorm
Marry the daughter off to an even further village)
Springtime is a fissure in the land
Daughter of sandalwood, daughter of poverty
How short were the days we watched for each other
VILLAGE (#21)
First among mortal villages, bathed in sunlight
Locust trees grow from this low, calcined soil
As if splitting through my chest
North Edge River, how far could you ever take me
From the grave of a drowned child…
Honey locust trees
You grow for nothing toward the sky
Like the land in escape from blight
Your rustling deep in winter
Takes hold of formless darkness
Tosses improbability
Like almond trees that blossom in their time
Or dreams that retch bitter water
And crowd onto a blind thoroughfare
OOU OF FASHION, INTO OBLIVION
I know not whom the moon’s reflection waits for
The river’s restless flow commands my gaze
Zhang Ruoxu, “Spring River of Flowers and Moonlight”
Today I sense the spirit of that old aria
But cannot hold it long, cannot respond in kind
Weighed down by silence of this moonlit night
I have lyricized a night of revelation
A night of grueling care
A winged deva straight from Dunhuang Grotto
A meter too subtle for my pen
A night that breaks tradition’s link
Crown of creation
The good earth receives my body and desire
As for my sensitive soul
Is it he who read of moonlight through dark pines?
That lyricist who lived in the capital unknown?
“Never forget that sentient beings
Are one in their inmost heart…”
But I, bereft of hearing, sight and speech
Go to battle year by year, not liberated yet
I am weighed down, as if by earth’s gravity
To be exactly who I am
I am a wanderer
Who secretly takes along with me
Something of the air I pass through
© Trans. by Denis Mair
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Xiao Hai (b.1965), originally named Tu Haiyan, a contemporary poet in China. He was born in Haian, Jiangsu Province, and graduated from the Chinese department in Nanjing University. He is a gifted poet as well as a representative poet of the rebellious generation. His poetic collections include Bending to Weed until Afternoon, Villages and Fields, Bei Ling River, The Great Kingdom of Qin (verse drama), and Song of Shadows (a long poem). He is the speaker in Ilan Stavans vs. Xiao Hai: Conversations about Literature. As a founder and major representative of They (a poetry magazine), he is the chief editor of They: 1986-1996. Besides creative writing, he also participates in compiling more than ten kinds of local history. His poetry was included in the list of contemporary Chinese literature by Beijing Literature in 1998. Prizes include Writers poetry award in 2000, the 2nd and 4th 5th Zi Jin Mountain literature awards of Jiangsu Province, and Tian Wen Poet of 2012, among others. He lives in Suzhou currently.