Mu Us Desert, Encountering a Herder Too Old to Have Consciousness
Paler than the belly of a dead fish
And more pallid than salt and alkali
The desert now is dwelling in his ears
In his eyes
In his sweat pores and hair follicles
And in his throat
From his aged flesh drained by the sun
No more grease or moisture can be squeezed out
His set of old coat-rack-like bones
Can no longer grandly prop up the skin
Draping like a heap of rags
Before he tells me anything
He starts to cough aloud
With the sound piercing into
His lungs having atrophied to the smallest size
And undiggable even by a lancet
The old man standing against the wind
Later coughs out a mere slight teardrop
Too tiny to moisten
A gunk at the corner of an eye
And in a trance I shed tears
Diffusing inside me like the water from a well
.
毛乌素，偶遇老得失去知觉的牧者
比死鱼肚子还苍白的沙漠
比盐碱还苍白的沙漠
如今住在他的耳朵里
住在他的眼睛里
住在他的汗毛孔里
住在他的喉咙里
被太阳榨干的一身老肉皮
再也榨不出一滴油水
一副衣架似的老骨头
已无法堂皇地撑起
那一堆破布片般向下披挂的皮囊
他还没有告诉我什么 就开始出声咳嗽
但那声音钻入已经萎缩到最小的肺里
用刀子掏也掏不出来了
迎风而立的老人 后来只咳出一滴细微的泪水
一滴让眼角屎都无法湿润的泪水
还有一阵恍惚之中 我的
像井水一样在身体内部弥漫的泪水
.
A Way to Clean Up Nightmares and Life
You must take with you a broom fair and square
Pretending it were a moon-shaped fan
Forge deeper ahead step by step in the depths of life
And experience what seem to be seen in your dreams
The nearly crumbled lives and bodies
And the plastic female mannequins
Next to the doors of fashion shops torn apart
Apparently with a bit of debauchery and stark naked
If you run into an old woman selling flowers
Stopping you and swaying a bunch of flowers
Or see petals scattered all over the ground just after she has left
You must keep cool pretend to be deeply perplexed
And accidentally entangled with yourself
And then quickly flash by
Or let another hapless guy zoom there
If afterwards you seem to end up in bad luck
By inadvertently encountering dump trucks
Dashing towards you as if fleeing
Spilling along the road debris of unknown origin
Harder to deal with and thus more treacherous than shattered glass
Thereby suddenly increasing the difficulty of cleaning
Then you must stop and hunker down to clean them up
Whether this road is your way back
Or the way you will have to pass when you go out soon
And whether this road is for humans worms or even ghosts
Are no longer your concerns
What is more important is you must hunker down
To clean them up
As if cleaning a nightmare with poison stingers
Or a road where an old friend has peacefully fallen into a slumber
Or a road on which a swan looks for spring or a person
As pure as a swan stretches out his wings hidden for a lifetime
And then flies gracefully and leisurely towards heaven.
.
清扫梦魇与生活的方法
你必须老老实实地带好扫帚 假装只是带了一把团扇
在生活的纵深地带 一步一步前往更深的地方
经历那些仿佛梦中所见 近乎崩溃的生活和身体
那些时装店门口被撕碎的
明显带着几份放荡的 赤裸裸的塑料女模特
路遇卖花的老妪拦路摇曳一束玫瑰
或者她刚刚离去后满地的落英
你一定要沉得住气 假装自己已深受迷惑
假装自己和自己不小心纠缠在一起
然后迅速闪过去 或者让另外的倒霉鬼闪上来
但如果接下来你仿佛终归要倒霉似的
不慎遇上了逃跑一样飞奔而来的渣土车
它们一路抛洒着一些来历不明的
比碎玻璃更难对付从而更凶险的残渣
徒然增加了清扫的难度
这时你必须停下来 弯曲身体清扫它们
这条路是不是你回去的路
或者是不是不久以后你出去时要经过的路
这条路是人走的 虫虫走的 甚至鬼走的
都不是你再需要关心的问题
重要的是 你必须弯腰清扫它们
就像清扫一场长着毒刺的梦魇一样地清扫它们
就像清扫着一条故人已安然入睡的路
一条天鹅寻春 或者天鹅一样纯洁的人
伸出隐匿一生的翅膀
向着天堂款款飞去的路
Poet’s Bio
Yan An is one of the most famous poets in contemporary China. He has authored fourteen poetry books, including his most famous poetry book, Rock Arrangement,which won him The Sixth Lu Xun Literary Prize, one of China’s top four literary prizes. He is the winner of various national awards and the Vice President of Shaanxi Writers Association, the head and Executive Editor-in-Chief of Yan River, one of the oldest and most famous literary journals in Northwestern China. In addition, he is a member of the Poetry Committee of the China Writers Association. His poetry book A Naturalist’s Manor, translated by Chen Du and Xisheng Chen, was published by Chax Press.
Translator’s Bios
Chen Du has a Master’s Degree in Biophysics from SUNY at Buffalo and another from the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Her translations have appeared in Columbia Journal, Lunch Ticket, and elsewhere. A set of three poems co-translated by her and Xisheng Chen was one of six finalists in the 2020 Gabo Prize for Literature in Translation & Multilingual Texts. She was longlisted by the 2021 John Dryden Translation Competition with Xisheng Chen for The World’s Ten Portraits (from “Rock Arrangement”) from Yan An. A set of five poems written by Yan An and co-translated by her and Xisheng Chen won the 2021 Zach Doss Friends in Letters Memorial Fellowship. Yan An’s poetry book, A Naturalist’s Manor, translated by her and Xisheng Chen, was published by Chax Press. She is also the author of the book Successful Personal Statements. Find her online at ofsea.com.
Xisheng Chen, a Chinese American, is an ESL grammarian, lexicologist, linguist, translator, and educator. He has an MA from Fudan University, Shanghai, China, and a Mandarin Healthcare Interpreter Certificate from the City College of San Francisco, CA, USA. His working history includes a translator for Shanghai TV Station, Evening English News, Lecturer at Jiangnan University, Wuxi, China, Adjunct Professor at the Departments of English and Social Sciences of Trine University (formerly Tri-State University), Angola, Indiana, notary public, and contract high-tech translator for Futurewei Technologies, Inc. in Santa Clara, California, USA. As a translator for over three decades, he has published many translations in various fields in newspapers and journals in China and abroad.
