The Shelter of Childhood
Her arms and her slightly arching legs
form a coastline after low tide
calling to his six year old body to match her curves
on this ordinary earthen kang in a northern family,
rough mat, green painted wooden lattice windows.
The crab apple tree in the yard is growing taller
together with the calm clothes drying on the wire
casting a considerate shadow into the dark afternoon of their house.
He is not sleepy yet, he is patiently
arranging troops on the border of his empire,
those are chess pieces and yellow mud soldiers,
some are slightly cracked, sometimes emitting
the same muddy smell as the newly built earthen kang.
But he still obediently returns to the arms of this woman
facing the same direction, as her, lying awake,
the swaying shadows of trees, breeze and the breath behind her neck,
they are sheltered by the same power.
Nothing important happens, outside is the sun,
the shadows, and the poultry are meditating in the corner.
When the young woman falls asleep, he gently moves
her white arm that stretches like a coastline,
He continues to fiddle with his military formation in the yard.
From time to time, he leans on the windowsill
and looks at the woman in their house,
the tranquillity after her work is like a treasure that is just left there,
how long the afternoon is, as if it will never end,
He safely leaves his greatest treasure
his mother, alone in another place.
Premonition
How to go deep into this autumn?
Not realising if its iron gate clattering open
leads to a timeless world
or a swarm of brown spectres suddenly fly out.
The only certainty is the snow cloud behind it,
swelling, motionless for a long time, bruised
like a white pig has been kicked hard.
The crickets’ chirping grows louder into the night,
As if a cold premonition.
The wind makes me tremble,
But I do not tremble for the wind.
The picnic flags by the river still cling to the willows,
In a blink, the barbecue lights and tents disappear,
not even the sound of engines starting can be heard.
The dusk cocktail beyond the woods,
gradually precipitating into deep red, green, and silver grey.
I quicken my pace. Suddenly, in the darkness by the river,
a darker horse emerges, sweating,
blooming towards me a black dahlia.
Reflect on the Universal Connectivity of All Things while Encountering Lotus Flowers
Just some leaves, either plump or shrivelled，
Just some petals, either red or white, repeating.
They are like some pink brush tips dipped in dew,
Hesitating over the rice paper of wrinkled and darkened water.
Just some lotus heads not yet breaking the surface,
When faded, flowers turn into green lanterns dimly glowing.
The startled fish darting beneath the lotus leaves,
Just the black water growing even darker,
Limbs entangled in a little lake besieged by high rises
Just a pile of clues waiting to be cleaned up,
Twin blossoms, are simply arranged together
by a random hand, their moments of blooming
yet both obeying commands from deep within the starry sky.
They are sheltered by random eyes,
Like a nouveau riche, embracing sister flowers into a mansion,
Replacing lotus flowers with flesh and blood,
It's difficult to repay the debts forgotten from past lives.
As I walk midst flowers and leaves,
Wanting to see how their roots conspire in the darkness,
but get surrounded by more flowers, more leaves,
More sisters, more repeated beauty
I dare not withdraw,
Only pretending to pass by coincidentally,
Brushing away the tangled threadlike wickers on the plank path,
Aware that lotus flowers do not bloom for me,
Nor for anyone,
Not even for themselves.
Similarly we come here, not for the lotus flowers,
As we gradually penetrate like a wedge-shaped prow,
The lotus leaf skirts dodge layer by layer,
Making space for an increasingly dark water surface.
Ma Yongbo was born in 1964,Ph.D,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.
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