from 宝塔及其他 (2015) [“The Treasure Tower and Other Poems”]
Translated from the Chinese by Talbot Hook
Longing for the Faraway
Written for a New Life
People sit on a train slowly approaching the station.
Their platform was left behind in another province;
those who saw them off had the same blazing eyes once, like flaming
handkerchiefs.
Time’s slow — it just is. Now on your business trip, reading Adam Smith.
The New Life’s heartbeat is like the Red Army
in the midst of the mountains’ high peaks. Just like that
Adam and Eve began their self-guided tour:
it’s only a lifetime.
The seven-year itch — nothing to be done about it.
Might as well go on until just touching it hurts.
So that’s them making their godless free state?
The train’s unbothered, compressing the horizon in dawn’s glow
in order to sound farewell.
Seven Offerings, Excerpts
I. Late
It’s the train refusing to part with December. It’s December refusing to be just passing scenery. It’s the heir refusing punishment, and also refusing pardon. It’s the hard seats of the slow train. It’s the temporary stop: even the rails refuse to glint, leaving people unable to tell the difference between a future hope and the wrong path. Pairs of chapped hands clutch bags of fertilizer. Luggage grows larger, despite all logic: no matter how light, it’s still heavy — like the tumor you just discovered. You turn indifferently to the window, to those small, firm, hateful causes and effects muddily reflected on its surface.
2. Entering the Village
Snow always has dense, biting overtones. The secrets of the dead, slowly exposed: that was the family tree, gone up in flames. That one, the original photo of the deceased. Cries spring forth from all quarters, filling those momentary holes like a flood of darkness in broad daylight, biting and dense.
3. Night
In the darkness, everything is shadowed. As dark as coal, yet darker than coal burning. After people fill their stomachs, they stretch out their hands toward the fire. In their hollow chatter is a boundless hatred.
In the darkness, everything is dark. The open fields gradually fade to fathomless coal-black. Those who return to the village in the darkness are mistaken for outsiders. One pilgrim stops before a blue flame and sees his own heart as a burning cargo ship on a distant sea.
4. Another Night
The blackout’s ended — even the village council has to show a little fear. When the lights come back on, the dead can rest. Turning on the light, the living can dream . . . .
The husband left home; the brother-in-law seized the house. The little weasel ran off to the temple to seduce some of the village girls. The men heard, but did nothing. When the town reservoir was being built, some wanted to join the Party but weren’t accepted. The corps accountant fled in desperation, clutching his abacus, leaping into the cloudy deeps. The mine behind the mine behind the mine. At the local college, writing love letters, writing exposés. An undergraduate classmate opens her legs. Another mouth on the census form . . . .
On comes the light — someone wakes up in tears, comforting themself: could this nightmare be the truth?
6. Breaking Ground
It’s a kind of seasoned, stinging green: winter wheat springing up from the snow and mud, jutting out like sparse teeth. Behind, a few brown trees gnaw at their own pain. They understand fully the wind’s flow, the mountain’s collapse, the river’s drought, the exhaustion of the minerals, the hypocrisy of the Earth God. A geomancer lazily fiddles with his new compass. And thus the homes of the departed, the descendants’ destinies, are fixed in doubt. Bad portents splayed out like the stars, and good fortune as delicate as smoke from a cooking fire: both pull up a chair. The eldest son breaks ground while other men cleanse their throats with liquor to do unclean work. Before long, the earth opens its colossal, bloody mouth — for what does it hunger? A flight of bright-tailed birds suddenly takes off, leaving ancient farmland for unfinished power lines. The birds fall silent, under no obligation to deliver any omen.
Society’s Nature
Wooden windows open with the wind.
Curtains quiver, like a cassock tugged at by a priest.
An unseen hand
caresses your shoulder timidly.
In the jealousy of class struggle,
your flesh blossoms into a foreign concession,
your skin as transparent as the narcissus.
The sunset pins-and-needles glow of the banking sector
slowly condenses into the first night air:
when it’s cold, it’s like a chain,
and when it reaches Spring, it’s just like the people’s spleen.
Wang Pu is a poet, scholar, translator, and teacher. He is currently associate professor of Chinese and Comparative Literature at Brandeis University. Born in Datong in China in 1980, he grew up in Beijing and attended Peking University. He went to New York University and received his PhD in Comparative Literature in 2012. His first book of poetry, Baota ji qita (The Treasure Tower and Other Poems, 2015), received high acclaim in China. His second book of verse is titled Xuzhang he zhayong (The Prelude and Miscellaneous Poems). Wang is also the Chinese translator of Walter Benjamin: A Critical Life.
Talbot Hook is a PhD student in educational psychology at the University of Connecticut. He is also an occasional writer, poet, and translator from Chinese and Spanish.
World Poetry Review 