Poems of Hong Ying, Zhai Yongming & Yang Lian

Poems of HongYing, ZhaiYongming &Yang Lian
Asia Pacific Poetry Series 6

Published by Vagabond Press
PO Box 958 Newtown NSW 2042 Australia
www.vagabondpress.net
First edition, May 2014.
Transnational edition, 2014.

Translations of Hong Ying’s poetry, and Introduction © Mabel Lee; translations of Zhai
Yongming’s and Yang Lian’s poetry © Naikan Tao and Tony Prince, 2014.

Cover image © Lin Chunyan, Flying in the Sky–2. 2007.
Oil on canvas, 200 X 300 cm.
Courtesy of the artist. http://www.linchunyan.com/

Designed and typeset by Michael Brennan
in 10/12 Bembo.

All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in
any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise without the
prior permission of the publisher.

ISBN 978-1-922181-56-5 

Poems of HongYing,
ZhaiYongming &Yang Lian

Edited and introduced by
Mabel Lee
Translated by
Mabel Lee, Naikan Tao & Tony Prince

Vagabond Press|Asia Pacific Poetry Series

Contents

Introduction by Mabel Lee …. 9

Hong Ying
Red Cherries …. 21
Thief …. 22
Final Sonnet …. 23
Another Sonnet …. 24
The Effect of Ice …. 25
Taking the Road through Yorkshire …. 26
Three Caves …. 27
Girl …. 28
Shock …. 29
Yellow …. 30
Place of Residence …. 31
Home Village …. 32
Writing …. 33
Whose Mother? …. 34
Hunger …. 35
Encounter …. 36
Kite …. 37
Place High Up …. 38
Rainbow …. 39
Profile …. 40
A Letter …. 41
Weekend …. 42
Gloves …. 43
Fish Teaching Fish to Sing …. 44
Ice Mountain …. 45
Southern Fortress …. 46
Mother’s Clock …. 47
The Story of You and Me …. 48

5

Illegitimate Child …. 50
Chongqing Slum …. 51
Dusk …. 52
Fortune Teller’s Dance …. 53
Electric Shock …. 54
Going to Marburg in March …. 55
Anxious Chopsticks …. 56
Enemy …. 57
Listening for the Drum …. 58

Zhai Yongming
Foreboding …. 60
The World …. 61
Soliloquy …. 62
The First Month …. 63
The Second Month …. 65
The Third Month …. 66
The Fourth Month …. 67
The Fifth Month …. 69
The Sixth Month …. 70
A Report on a Child Prostitute …. 71
In the Old Days …. 74
Lament for Scholars …. 76
Letter from an Earlier Dynasty …. 79
Wounded Spring …. 81

Yang Lian
The Golden Tree …. 84
Blood Sacrifice …. 85
Legend …. 87
The Week of Bathing …. 89
Reflections on Gandan Monastery …. 90

6

The Eagle’s Soliloquy …. 94
Xun:To the Listeners in the Dark …. 95
Xun:The Darkness of the Listeners …. 97
The Last Starlit Sky at Fifty-Five …. 99
Homage to the Thatched Cottage …. 100
Dance: Swimming Naked with Li Bai …. 103
Declining Crescent Moon — Reclining

Court Lady …. 106
Anniversary Snow …. 107
An Address in Berlin …. 109
Notes .... 111
Translators’ biographies …. 112

7

Hong Ying

Red Cherries

Like this you follow your shadow to the edge
Cherries you hold rush to beat you to the street
From the building top bathed in sunlight bright red
Juice splashes down
People screaming on the street suggest
You must find shelter
Everyone is asking about it this morning
An odd question monopolizes the street
A few cherries keep falling
Roll soundlessly you retreat to a corner
Bending you see the shadow
Jumping on the roof like a dice.The rhythm
Is familiar you turn
Harshly stop me approaching with my excuses
The instant you spread your arms to the sky
I have to confess
My deception has brought you to this

21

Thief

A word-eating rat jumps on the chair the man has been
using for a year

It heaves a sigh scuttles off
The image has a lengthy footnote a slim
Woman with sagging breasts
Like a bunch of dried sunflowers
She wears a faint smile
Crosses the road goes upstairs, knocks, enters
Uses his flush toilet she is happier than the rat
Lustful breathing and bodies thrashing
She and the rat differ the rat shows him
The grief of depravity she tells him
On the last day of May an orphan
Suffered again for the crime of being an orphan
Near the coal loader at the train station
No force could resist the train’s speeding wheels

22

Final Sonnet

Person opposite carefully opens the window suddenly
Slams it shut again he covers his mouth
His throat is making odd sounds

The window is two metres above the ground
Withered grass sways in layers of cold frost
On the dark red wall
A scorpion tries many times to get in by the window

He is holding an axe
Brandishes it could smash the glass any time
Crash into this world of blinding light
Clutching swirls of blood but he doesn’t

And I can’t go to identify him
Cold frost has also locked me in the window truly
Who would want to look at him the scorpion or

23

Another Sonnet

Faced with dissent he thought about frogs
How he could trump those slick green waves
Are like an instrument of torture
He doesn’t need to listen
If there is a fire hang frogs over the flames
The charred smell is sure to pacify
Anyone daring to approach
Teeth tantalised by the smell of meat indeed
Even for those unaffected it is a symbol of beauty
Crunchy frog bones
Thinking of this he admires his own profundity
Skates across the water surface
Perfects the meaning of instrument of torture
Shouts penetrate his body and resurface
Amazing that he can get people to keep listening

24

Zhai Yongming

Foreboding

The woman in the black skirt comes with night
Her mysterious glance drains me of energy
It suddenly occurs to me that the fish will all die this

season
While every road cuts across the path of flying birds

A mountain range like a corpse is dragged off by the
darkness

The palpitations of nearby bushes can be faintly heard
The gigantic birds gaze down on me from the sky
With human eyes, in an atmosphere of secret barbarism
Winter is stirring a brutal male consciousness

I always maintain a calmness out of the ordinary
Like a blind person, so I see darkness in daylight
Candid as a baby, my fingerprints
Have no more sorrow to offer
Footsteps! An ageing sound
Dreams appear to know something, from the depths of

my eyes
I see a time that has forgotten to flower
Putting pressure on the dusk

Moss is held in my mouth, what they have begged for
Folds smiles sympathetically into the breast
The night hints at convulsions, like a cough
Stuck in the throat, I have already left this cave of death

60

The World

A world of mysterious faces broken by the wind, a head of white flint
Burnt by time to an ambiguous phantom
With a tyrant’s gaze the sun preserves the scope of its indignation
As it searches out the crown of my head and the soles of my feet

Although this happened long ago, I scorn everything in dreams
Approaching softly to be impregnated by the sky
Dark clouds there incubate the setting sun
The sockets of my eyes hold a colossal ocean
From deep in my throat white coral grows

The waves beat against me
Like a midwife patting my back, and so
The world invades my body
Startling me, bewildering me, causing me to feel a certain ecstasy

I still cherish the world, watching it
With the mind of a mighty beast, after deep meditation
I think: history is not remote
Then I hear the fitful tides, with their ancient breathing

In the dusk, in the universal death of newborn infants’ cries
The White Ram still glitters overhead
Like the gate of human reproduction, the precious and fearful rays
Of motherhood were already predestined before my birth

For these primitive rock strata I plant the roots of a black dream
Which grows with my blood
I have seen the world with my own eyes
So I create night to save mankind from disaster

61

Soliloquy

I, a wild conceit, full of the charm of the abyss
Chanced to be born from you. Earth and sky
Are combined into one, you call me woman
And have strengthened my body

I am a white feather, soft like water
You cup me in your hands, I then contain the world
Dressed in flesh and blood, under the sun
I am so dazzling it is hard for you to believe
I am a most tender and perceptive woman
I see through everything and will share every burden
I long for a winter, for an immense dark night
With the heart as my realm, I want to hold your hands
But in your presence my gesture is only a tragic failure

When you leave, my anguish
Heaves my heart into my mouth
To kill you with love, whose taboo is this?
The sun rises for the whole world! I live only for you
With the most intense and romantic feelings
I fill you, from top to toe, I have my own way

A clamour of cries for help, could the soul stretch out a hand?
Let the sea become my blood, it will raise me up
To the foot of the sunset. Does anybody ever remember me?
But what I remember is not just my life

62

The First Month

As though it had long existed, as though pre-arranged
I walk here, the sound quite beyond my control
It installs me in a side-room facing south

Even the first time I come across a pitch-black day
Everywhere there are paths that look much the same
The brisk wind leaves me cold and lonely
The maize-fields are exhilarated at such moments
I have come here, I hear the roar of Pisces
And the ceaseless trembling of the sensitive night

Tiny haystacks spread solemnity abroad
A single frail cloud like a solitary beast
Creeps near, smelling of bad weather
Then seems to encounter me and become a heart worth

understanding

A fishing rod glides on the water’s surface
Oil lamps flare up and die down again
The hoarse, frenzied barking of dogs induces contemplation
Yesterday the wind’s titanic roar seemed to understand

everything
Don’t leave any room for black trees
Set a fatal ambush in every corner
Endure the moment when human bodies are everywhere
Now there is nothing to stop me from becoming moonlight

Married couples hear the sound of dawn rain in their dreams
Black donkeys lean against the millstone discussing tomorrow
The earth there composed of mingled yin and yang

63

Knows all the years and months like the back of its hand
I hear roosters crowing
And the sound of a waterwheel

64

Yang Lian

83

The Golden Tree

I am the god of cataracts, the god of snowy mountains
Lofty, virile, lord of the new moon
I have become the sole chieftain of all the rivers
Small birds find a home in my breast
Dense forest hides the tracks that lead to secret pools
I run wild like a herd of stags just coming to maturity
My desires, like early spring
Gather strength from everything in tumult

I am a golden tree
Yielding a harvest of gold
A passionate flirtation comes from the abyss
I pay no heed to the exhortations of cowards all around
Till my waves have filled it up

A wandering woman, a woman glittering on the water
Who is the only woman that forces me to drink?

My gaze holds back the night
Twelve trombones hold back the wind in the guava flowers
Wherever I go there are no shadows
Every strawberry I touch becomes a dazzling star rising

from the centre of the world
I am a true man, and I possess you all

84

Blood Sacrifice

White skulls crammed with crimson designs, offerings to
the sun and war

Blood of slaughtered infants, blood of circumcision,
nourishing my endless life

A knife of black obsidian cuts the earth’s breast open, a
heart is lifted high

Countless banners like the drumbeats of a wrestling match
rage among the evening clouds

I live, and with an arrogant smile I lead you to the conquest
of death

— With my own blood I sign my name in history, an
adornment to ruins and rituals

So wipe away your sorrows! Let beetling cliffs shut in the
boldness of the mountains

Again and again the vultures dive, like gusts of stormy
wind, pecking eye-sockets clean

Bodies running or prostrate on the altar of adversity all
bloom together

Long-lost hopes return riding on the sharp point of
hunger, sowing jeers and eulogies

What you have listened to leads to the lonely splendour
found on the curve of the horizon

Then let the blood flow: the glory that marches towards
death is stronger than death itself

Bring me your offerings! Forty maidens will sing of your
good fortune

Tanned skins like tinkling copper bells march on amid
fasting and watching

85

The noble and the base, the innocent and the evil, the pure
and the sordid ebb and flow

Vast memories, my mysteries are continually emerging
accompanied by spasmodic revelry

Jewelled pagodas soar upwards, pointing out a way to
Heaven for the dusk that shades the mountaintops

You have all been liberated — from pools of blood — and
draw near to holiness

86

Legend

Dark red, the enormous valley steps slowly into your
retreating form

Intervals of calm amid the storm. Dusk.The tenderness of
ox hide on display

There are only ghosts and wild animals.This immense land
with its fluctuating themes

By whom is it hunted, by whom sent into exile? Startled
awake before the darkness of night

The white fragments of bone have no home to return to
The vulture hangs a bloodthirsty oracle on high

When did you start to symbolise the column of azure?
The seagull’s bright-eyed glance, showering cold hard salt

everywhere
The talons of the flood, rending, kneading, honing the

mountain ranges
Fossils, fires that burn the wilderness, perform rites for the

crystallisation of death
Your clumps of black thorns spread a dense loneliness all

around
The years and the violence have carved coral from

shattered walls
You are, and are not, the sea, the island’s trembling gaze

responds to the sun
Above you, establishing a hazy order

Heroic achievements have been left to the earth, the trees
are sparse as always

An expanse of strange black flowers blooming everywhere

87

in unpopulated regions
Phantom towers float in the air, truer than thought
Who will tell this story and to whom will it be told?
Twilight, a pause, the reticent heart is deeply hidden in

vacant solitude
Your wife has gone away, inevitably arrogant
You, in your solitary singleness, are as vast as a dream

88