Zhang Shuguang
(China)
HUMAN LABOR
A whole morning to split wood.
Stack vegetables for winter.
Seal the doors, the panes
against the faintest thread of wind or snow.
Beyond the glass, the tree’s stripped off its leaves.
Who can say it grieves.
All the groundhog work we do,
learning how to wait.
©Trans. by Diana Shi & George O’Connell
CASSANDRA
No one believes what I say,
no one. When I speak, they
just laugh, talk about weather, or idly
watch pigeons on the square, pecking,
cooing for a mate. No one believes
anything I say. Children hang back,
tossing stones, how they treated old Cézanne.
When dusk absolves the leaves of olive trees,
stones on the city wall incline toward history.
Herdsmen number their returning sheep, the bars
breathe out tobacco smoke, but no one,
no one believes me. They chatter on
about that crash long ago, seen on TV,
the playboy making off with the wife of that oil tycoon,
sex scandals, eau de cologne, cauliflowers, Edward Said.
Fingering the past like a precious photo album,
no one believes what I say.
Night cloaks with an armor no arrow can pierce.
Neither rain nor flood lashes our shores.
The cinema unspools that sinking
seventy years ago. As I said
on another occasion, or maybe in a poem,
we need only a box office, someplace
to trade banknotes for tears. Neither hope
nor fear. The shadow of a carousel horse
crouches silent in the flowerbed,
archaic prophet.
©Trans. by Diana Shi & George O’Connell
WHAT CAN I SAY
What can I say, in the face of this heartless world
Cold and indifferent as snow? Clowns wear masks
Seemingly in high spirits.“life means happiness,”they say,
But that’s not how I see it. I can never be happy.
Forests are disappearing, rivers are drying up.
The years bring not wisdom but increasing apprehension.
Snow keeps falling. Like small talk on a winter afternoon.
But in the face of truth, I can say nothing.
©Trans. by Howard Goldblatt
TALES HULAN RIVER
Since my first sight of the river, turbid
Yellow, knowing its name from a novel,
Flowing lazily, not rushing along,
Turning and moving slowly to the northeast,
Forty years gone by.
I grew up on its banks, another
County town, before I’d read the novel,
and not knowing who wrote it.
But I’d heard stories about the river, like,
a certain County Chief murdered his first wife,
a country girl, threw her body into the river.
Then came a flood, carried her body to
the gate of her family home, and it never left.
I never saw her body, but I’ve seen
Drowned pigs,chickens,entantgled in foam
and sodden weeds, floating off to the horizon.
Two miles from the county town. That year
Mother moved into a riverside sanatorium,
My kid brother and I went there on summer break,
Sneaking out in a boat to cast nets with the
Grown-ups,to catch fish and put them
In a puddle outside, keeping them on the alive,
or quickly cooking and putting them on the table.
Oh,such a long time, that summer. But I
Still recall the sky poking through reeds—
Clouds floating by ,so peaceful and quiet—
With the rank smell of river on the breezy air.
Silently it flowed, people living
on both banks,poor,happy
or laden with misery. It has witnessed so much
suffering, so much death. Two of my schoolmates
–primary and secondary—drowned in it.
Liu Juan’s mother gave him a
girl’s name, to keep him from harm, they say;
then there was Chen Xiaofeng,a tall boy,
good-looking, today they’d call him lady-killer.
He would be in his forties, if he’d lived,
Might have a paunch like other men.
I ‘m still around, living with the sorrow
left behind by the dead. So many deaths,
too many to bear. Here is where I mourn
my mother, her brother, grandmothers—both of them
–two of my father’brothers,mourn the passing
Of time and of memory, mourn a river bound to
dry up, but maybe not for many years yet.
A tributary of the Sungari River,it merges
With the Heilong River, and empties into the sea.
©Trans. by Howard Goldblatt
PLATO AND THE POETS
After the poets were banished from Utopia, they
began to roam the world of men. With the passage of years,
they were weighed down with filth, their voices
turned hoarse. But Plato did not
hang around for long. Dante arranged for him a place
in Limbo, Hell’s most peaceful level.
Now free to propagate his philosophy.
What made him unhappy was that poets he disliked
were there with him. They quarreled all day long,
chanting one moment, chasing women the next.
©Trans. by Howard Goldblatt
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Zhang Shuguang was born in 1956 in Heilongjiang province. He begang writing poetry in college, adopting a robust, hearty style. He has translated into Chinese Dante’s Divine Comedy and the poetry of Milosz. He teaches literature at a college in harbin.