POETIC DELIGHTS MA' YONGBO-CHINA

 1-My Own Darkness 

Midnight, in the vacant courtyard  

I listen to my own darkness  

long gazing at the starry sky  

while stars are particles shedding from coarse sandpaper 

 

The Earth is rising  

boundless as conscience  

I clap, hearing curved echoes from every path  

this ripened darkness is a black angel  

erect in the shrine of shrubs  

quieter than truth, purer than death  

Starlight falls into eyes no one can find  

eyes gradually paling, like frozen wooden buckets  

while the Earth, nearing the stars, trembles with fear  

there my unfortunate joy grows transparent

我自己的黑暗

午夜，在无人的庭院里

我倾听自己的黑暗

长久地仰望着星空

而星光，是粗砂纸上的颗粒在渐渐脱落

大地在上升

大地无垠有如良知

我拍手，倾听每一条小径发出弯曲的回声

这成熟的黑暗是黑色的天使

直立在灌木丛的神龛之中

比真理更安静，比死亡更纯粹

星光，落在谁也找不到的眼睛里

眼睛渐渐变白，如同结冰的木桶

而大地，越是接近星空便越是恐惧

那是我不幸的喜悦在变得透明

2-Interrogation  

If you were placed in absolute silence,  

no sound at all, not even your own heartbeat,  

not even the echo of your own murmurs,  

not even the snap of your fingernail breaking against the wall—  

would you still speak as if addressing  

a vast, invisible audience,  

and feel a criminal joy in doing so?  

If you were placed in a cell, a labyrinth, a narrow tomb,  

with no guards, no breath of a bull,  

no dry bones, no neighbors who died for beauty,  

and no golden-haired companion lying beside you, crowned in flowers—  

would you still, like a mole chasing a vein of ore,  

light on your blind headlamp?  

If you were placed in a vast, boundless, brilliantly lit library,  

and you alone walked between its endless, orderly shelves,  

yet always turned to the same page of the same book,  

to the same merciless sentence—"You do not exist."  

this enormous black-bound book has no title, no author—  

would you still write poetry, as if you might find a word  

to end this hopeless immortality,  

or this immortal despair?

追问

如果你置身完全的寂静

没有任何声音，哪怕是你自己的心跳

哪怕是你的自言自语，也都没有一点回声

哪怕你的指甲抠着墙壁断裂

你还会这样说话，仿佛有一大群隐形的听众

并且感到犯罪一般的快乐吗

如果你置身牢房，迷宫，狭长的坟墓

没有看守，也没有公牛的喘息

没有干燥的骨头，没有为美而死的邻居

更没有和你并排而卧戴花环的金色长发

你还会像追逐矿脉的鼹鼠一样

拧亮头顶盲目的灯吗

如果你置身广大无边灯火辉煌的图书馆

只有你一个人走在整齐无尽的书架之间

翻开的却总是同一本书的同一页

同一句冷酷至极的话语——你并不存在

这本巨大的黑皮书没有书名也没有作者

你还会这样写诗吗，仿佛总能写出一个词语

终结这绝望的永生和永生的绝望吗

If Not for You  

If not for you, I would wake upon a reef,  

not knowing how I had come to sea.  

I would look around at the vast expanse,  

at the first elements of the universe,  

not knowing what they were, nor what I was.  

If not for you, I would sit atop a solitary suitcase,  

a supple wicker chest exuding ancestral fragrance.  

Inside it, my unseen manuscripts—  

Siberian snow scrawled on the backs of diagnoses,  

arguing in ciphers against the Latin certainties of the front.  

I would wait, in a wind-swept square too large to hold me,  

for a black train to take me to the far side of the moon—  

a train with no conductor.  

If not for you, I would not be this shape,  

a net cast wide, now reduced to a single knot.  

I would keep changing—face, age, flag, even gender.  

Tears of the innocent would sharpen scythes,  

mothers who fed their young on rust  

would give birth to more reefs,  

round-skulled, and stepping upon them,  

they would smile as they walked toward me.  

假如不是你

假如不是你，我将在一块礁石上醒来

却不知道自己怎么就到了海上

我就会四顾茫茫，那宇宙最初的元素

不知道它是什么，也不知道自己是什么

假如不是你，我就会坐在孤零零的手提箱上

柔韧的柳条箱散发着祖传的芳香

箱子里是我无人得见的诗稿，西伯利亚的雪

写在诊断书的背面，以密码和正面拉丁语的确定性抗辩

我就会一直在一个大得刮风的广场

等着一辆漆黑的火车，把我送向月球背面

它没有司机

假如不是你，我就不会是现在这个形态

像撒出去的网，只剩一个网结

我就会一直变幻，面孔，年龄，旗帜，甚至性别

就会有无辜者的眼泪化成磨快的镰刀

用铁锈喂养后代的母亲，就会生下更多的礁石

如圆颅，并且踏着它们，微笑着向我走来

AUTHOR:

MA' YONGBO-CHINA

Ma Yongbo was born in 1964,Ph.D,representative of Chinese avant-garde poetry,and a

leading scholar in Anglo-American poetry.He has published over eighty original works

and translations since 1986 included 7 poetry collections.He focused on translating and

teaching Anglo-American poetry and prose including the work of Dickinson, Whitman,

Stevens, Pound, Williams and Ashbery. He recently published a complete translation of

Moby Dick, which has sold over half a million copies. He teaches at Nanjing University

of Science and Technology. The Collected Poems of Ma Yongbo (four volumes, Eastern

Publishing Centre, 2024) comprising 1178 poems, celebrate 40 years of writing poetry.