It is early winter, and the room is colder than outside,
the tattered screen window still clings to the frame
dust and cobwebs filter the cold air.
The osmanthus no longer breathes out fragrance,
having stopped growing. For eleven years—
it is the first time I’ve noticed:
this prisoner is trapped between two buildings
has grown taller than my fourth-floor window.
By the basement window of the opposite building, beneath the balcony,
lie two black-and-white cats, one large, one small.
They must be mother and son, or father and daughter,
the kitten rests its head on the big cat’s flank,
in front of them are clumps of shredded paper.
They have been lying there all along,
they make me feel even colder,
especially on such a gloomy day.
nor is anything waiting for them,
They do not mew, just remain still as if in contemplation,
they are no more than two cats—
or perhaps, more than just cats.
On sunny days, I’ve seen them
crawling on the lawn streaked with yellow and green,
belly to the ground. I once whistled at them.
their disappearance will go unnoticed by me,
they and I are equally stubborn.
A Blank Canvas Is the Start of Each Day
The canvas is stretched, already standing there firmly—
a vast expanse of white snow, not yet marked
by the footprints of humans or animals, not yet
stirred by breaths, soft or heavy, that might lift snow dust.
This is the silence of creation’s dawn,
waiting for a form to emerge:
a red fox refining elixirs,
a young wolf that sweeps away its own tracks with its tail
yet it becomes all the more exposed for it.
More likely, it is a splitting abyss
at our feet, yawning, steaming,
smelling of sulfur. The artist has not yet appeared,
he is in another room, in light flecked with particles,
rubbing his slightly stiff hands—this is winter.
Waiting is silence, a silence that spreads
from one room to another, a silence like a breath
leaving tense, fine beads of sweat on the windowpane.
This is the silence in a snow field, waiting
for the first stuttering lines of verse to take shape.
Only a curious cat tries, in this mirror without reflection,
to see the childhood of a striped tiger.
Working while waiting, dwelling in darkness while waiting—
what enduring patience this is, with no hidden mouth
whispering to him the first canto of Inferno.
The artist waits for his jet-lagged self.
Just as the poet, each day must face a sheet
of equally desolate white paper, like a blind man
groping on white for the traces of words
and the sparse or dense pinholes of thought.
Each time, failure looms possible—
slipping in this white mire,
sinking, unable to pull free.
Every stroke, every line, every moment hangs by a thread,
yet the flat brush and sharp pencil
still cautiously and calmly, reach toward
Exquisiteness is repeatedly tapping at joints so tiny
they require a magnifying glass, even a microscope, to see—
as if words have contracted knee rigidity,
needing little leather hammers to tap and pound.
Exquisiteness is a smooth, still vase:
no birds nest in it, nor can flowers be inserted; it lets no light through,
like a wise man whose ears have shriveled into his skull.
Exquisiteness is a sterile flower
not even a vase to hold it
plucked and placed in the empty grave of its own mouth.
(This poem, too, is rather exquisite.)
Ma Yongbo was born in 1964, Ph.D. representative of Chinese avant-garde poetry, and a leading scholar in Anglo-American poetry. He is the founder of polyphonic writing and objectified poetics. He is also the first translator to introduce British and American postmodern poetry into Chinese.
He has published over eighty original works and translations since 1986 including 9 poetry collections. He focused on translating and teaching Anglo-American poetry and prose including the work of Dickinson, Whitman, Stevens, Pound, Amy Lowell, Williams, Ashbery. His translation of Moby Dick has sold over 600,000 copies. The Collected Poems of Ma Yongbo (four volumes, Eastern Publishing Centre, 2024) comprising 1178 poems, celebrate 40 years of writing poetry.
