CHEN XIANFA

FIVE POEMS

translated by Nell Greenhouse

Notes on a Night Traveller

You say we should all have a source
But this poem, what if it simply has no name to live off

You love those whirling glass slippers
But this poem, what if it has merely the blind’s
Eye sockets, the crippled’s
Injured legs
Our obstinacy and
Ineffable numbness to live off

What if this poem has nothing to live off
Like a hungry dog at the door to the grocery store
Hunting through the refuse
Still finding nothing… 

Lifeless shop lights line both sides of the road unbroken
The night traveller’s endless dreamland suppresses tears
The empty glass slips from my palm

My canoe has no grasp at all of words
Where will it sail
We will never know quite how deep beneath these soles our fathers are buried
But this poem, what if that is what it lives off

Notes on a Cudgel

Dawn, a dog in the clearing incessantly howling

One moment it snarls and snaps
The next hangs its head and whines
Ahead there is nothing but empty space
Warily it ducks and dives
As though some cudgel hangs suspended in the air

I try to understand it. I
Squat down
Eyes lower to the dog’s
Level, still I see nothing
I try to reconcile… those years
In the midst of my own despair

Navy blue of dawn. Quiet of bare grassland
Quiet of dew drops
I try to fabricate a likeness of myself
A spectator, drawing on a cigarette,
Listening to my own howls
Seeing the world through a dog’s eyes
The wind sweeps across the ground, it sweeps across my face

A distant place… the cudgel, I do not know what became of it
And yet it seems still to hang there
Demanding someone pay agonizing tribute

The dog ought to get back up and greet me
Or else I could softly retreat into that mud-spattered
Coat, both dark and glossy   

Notes on a Hangover on Mazong Mountain

Assume impermanence when speaking from on high. Birdsong found my ears
From dead twigs and withered leaves
Dead drunk last night at the mountain inn
They encircled me, plied me with hot towels
Upon waking my limbs were still stiff
The buoyancy of insect calls made the wooden bed heavier still
Rising from my side, through a chink in the door I saw
Moonlight’s finely honed pallor

… I found a kind of stifled balance
My ears and the ears buried deep beneath tombstones
Finish their graceful transformations
On the warblings in a dream of a white-haired starling
Of the bodies around me
Those longer dead and of whom less remain
Bring me peace. It bends toward me and sings deeply
The body’s dock is still running dry… When did the body’s
Current ever come to a momentary rest

Assume impermanence when speaking from on high. The evening breeze stirs the curtain
Mixing light and shadows in the glass
The tap of falling leaves against my face is like
A warning: if there is only one thing yet to do
Then it is still as before—quickly write yourself down
The dead, once soundless drinking companions, surround me
There are only words… infinite rash words that bled my body dry

Notes on a Mountain Crossing

Barren mountains below my window
Ashen-faced as a group of saints
White clouds that occasionally pass are the heart’s stupor
That none could restrain
Saints in this era should be malnourished
Oh, but what of their desires

We, this group of philistines that fly higher than feathers
An altitude of 7000 metres is just right for saints
To pass us the utopia another forged
A utopia static, scorching, singular
We deride from within our cabin… the sounds of jeering
Oh, but what of the saints’ dignity

What does this blind journey bring
Whether here or elsewhere exhaustion always follows
The sacred spires already underfoot
If the mountain below my window was covered in snow
And inky blackbirds rushed out, the saints would have no choice
But to live off these striking flaws and what then

Notes on Knowing Immortality

The grapes’ taste
Fermented from southern soil and the waning moon
Is enough. Yet you must move on
Another step forward
Knowing that another mouth
Has tasted it before you

To stand in the empty structure
And listen to children by the window
Reading your poetry is enough. Yet you must move on
Another step forward
Make the children aware some spirit has possessed him
And stopped him from speaking out

Flying birds are enough, hijacking is enough
One-asks-the-other-answers enough
What is it that makes osmanthus’ scent so intoxicating

To stitch the face upturned in the trees’ shade
Together with starlight is enough
For me to have to be at once both
Hidden needle and thread is enough

Clear images are enough
Immortal forms enough
What is it that makes this small bird fly against the headwind into the window
And what is it that makes its eternal claws crimson