Three Poems by Ma Yongbo

 

Waking up at Dawn to Read a Poem about the Arrival of Death

 

Who would consider me a brother,

snapping open his enormous alligator wallet

to buy this fleeting moment of clarity

with all its tiny, rash-like gleaming coins?

 

Fear and curiosity, perhaps even a certain resentment,

like claws approaching the hut.

What words can illuminate the darkness?

Darkness, too, is a lamp, all around us,

filled with the sounds of burning.

 

Time is nothing but an illusion solidified by air

The reason for a moment and a person's existence

is as if they don't exist, leaving a dry throat

charred fragments of the night

settling in a dried-up inkwell

 

A warm form emanates from around the ribs,

as if to soften the bare, glaring flesh,

and call it brotherly affection.

 

It's as if someone in the distance is pulling down a black branch,

then releasing its supple elasticity into the air. 

 

 

Walking by the Hills on a Spring Night

 

You pee in the wilderness and clap your hands.

You feel the wilderness listening, and you clap again.

Grass shrimps in the stream and tadpoles in the lake are listening,

lights and shadows in the water are listening,

along with stones and dark figures slipping behind the thickets.

 

Dark green tea bushes with no new sprouts budding,

and the breath of unseen graves.

Pale bluish flames atop Purple Mountain burn through the night,

as if an empty night market lingers on in silence.

 

A McDonald’s clerk speaks to the last guest.

One road debates with another in the dark.

At the silent crossing, a man with a pitch-black face

begs from me the darkness I have left.

Just as we fall in love for things long faded away, to keep living,

the decay of this spring night is so grand. 

 

 

How to Be a Poet in China 

 

Those poets who publish frequently, 

treading government offices like their own homes 

Those poets who publish books endlessly, 

waving iridescent water-sprays 

Those poets stepping off one stage onto another, 

wearing floral coats, feigning solemnity 

Those poets winning awards quietly, 

bestowing prizes upon one another 

 

Those lonely poets pulling down their hats, 

flashing through crowds 

then vanishing like revolutionaries 

Those poets who speak rarely, 

their voices rusty from long silence— 

like mourners pushing open palace gates 

where gods have long departed 

Those poets surfacing from the ocean of creation, 

breathing briefly, raising solitary spouts— 

giant whales 

 

Those occasional poets

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.