Like a flock of chickens and ducks scattering all over mountains and fields
foraging
Children play hide-and-seek
as well as playing house
When they are tired out
They head for home that is just a shelter from the wind and rain
Standing on a dunghill
They practice flying again and again
Once upon a time
It was just a cat
Docile, cautious and obedient
Dedicated to catching mice heart and soul
Which made everybody love it whenever they saw it
All of a sudden, it shows its fangs
and becomes a tiger
Ferocious, cruel, greedy
With an appetite that will never be satisfied
A tail that fails to tuck
Pulls out an astronomical figure
An iron cage
Will confine it for its declining years
The sunshine has streaked across the month of May
Lighting up a hundred thousand oil lamps
With every tree being a fire
The whole mountain is set ablaze
Dusk witnesses one lamp after another edging towards night
The wind has been blowing for half a day
To no avail
Drawn from a pile of cotton
A thread is thence woven into cloth
Some is made into outside
Some is made into inside
There is no exception that
constant rubbing by life will
always rip the outside
prior to the inside
Having kneaded all the yearnings into flour
Which in turn was rolled out into a moon-like dough
In which to wrap the days that couldn't be counted even using fingers
She swallowed it one bite at a time
A dream was half done
when suddenly a string of hasty knocks
woke the dreamer
The flowers beside me are in full bloom
Every leave is a carefully-selected prop
I keep on adjusting poses to take another picture
Presently
The whole garden full of spring vigor will disappear without saying good-bye
The villages in the distance will disappear as well
Only this photo
is the proof that they have existed in the world
Like another person who has escaped from my own body
The shadow either sways in front of me
or follows me behind
I try to get rid of it
Exasperated
I'll stamp my feet several times ferociously
Having tossed about for most of my life
I still haven't walked out of
The shadow left in my heart
All the rural farmers' sincerity is expressed on the table on which
are seven plates and eight bowls
Chewing the flavor of my native land
and making a burp
will remind me of a mountain of past events
Bagging up and
Picking up the residual expressions
I am bound for home
A mother
Has brought up a large mob of children
While a large mob of children fail to support a mother
In their eyes
Mother's mummified breasts
are like slowly deflated balls
being thrown back and forth between them
These repeated happenings
have never altered
A woman's desire
To become a mother
Like sugarcoated haws on a stick
A street has sprung up
One stall after another
The din of shouting, hawking and bargaining
Makes a symphony of ups and downs
of joys and sorrows in life
Like a fat intestine
squeezed with the world's vitality
from this end to that end
The street is just where to buy a popsicle or a pair of socks
Or you may buy nothing
Having been soaked with flavors of the countryside
You may plunge into a beautiful dream
空也静:原名魏彦烈,军旅诗人,青海省作协会员。出版诗集多部。获昆仑文艺奖,唐蕃古道文学奖,诗歌春晚“全国十佳诗人"称号。
Kong Yejing (meaning void and peace), whose original name was Wei Yanlie, a military poet, is currently a member of Qinghai Writer's Association. His poems have found their ways into several poem collections. He has been awarded Kunlun Literature and Art Award, Tang-Tubo Ancient Road Literature Award and the title of Top Ten Poets in China in the Poetry Spring Festival Gala.
译者:柳溪清泉,原名倪庆行,山东农业大学外国语学院副教授。对诗歌情有独钟,诗歌译作散见于《海外英语》、《暮雪诗刊》、《英语通》及《中国诗歌网》、《译原》网络期刊。研究方向为语篇分析、汉英对比与翻译。座右铭:生有所为(To live is to function)。