I don’t need a fantastic beast such as the leopard. At the river mouth by the sea, I feed a silver hammerhead shark with bits of myself!
[author title=”Chen Bolai” image=”https://sindhcourier.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Chen-Bolai-Chinese-Poet-Sindh-Courier.png”]Chen Bolai, was born in Guizhou Prov. in 1965 and now lives in Haikou city of Hainan Province. He’s a lawyer, member of China Writers’ Association, one of the first contract poets of Hainan Provincial Academy of Literature and winner of Top-10 Poets Award in 2017 held by Modern Youth Periodical. He once attended the 16th National Prose Poetry Club and studied at the Poetry Advanced Study Class of Luxun Academy of Literature. He has published 4 collections of poems “Breaking: 1985-1995” (1999), “No Breaking” (2017), “Between the Mountains and the Sea“ (2017- prose poems), and “Selected Poems of Chen Bolai” (2018, Chinese-English version). [/author]
Sculptor
In the vast sunset the sculptor can feel
Twilight spreading on his forehead together with
The hidden river and valleys
Under the chisel appears a running figure
Joints of the sculptor
Secretly sound in his dazed body
But the time is not enough. The sculptor
Is being sculpted; A flesh-eating chisel
Is whittling him
Either he falls down ahead of schedule or
The runner being sculpted finally
Runs out the stone
Hence, the hammer, not only his hammer
Produces sound in the wind. In the water
Is the river bed removed by the torrent!
(Translated by Chen Lidong)
At the River Mouth
About the leopard,
A lot of talk about it in recent years, and quite a few people
Rush here at night for a glimpse
Of the elusive animal with a spotted coat; Wild fantasies
Have congealed, like a jacket held together by dark buttons
That leopard is kept alive in us (in truth),
And creates great conversation among leopard lovers,
Including metaphors, even a mimic of its low snort
At any moment an enormous brilliant figure
Can jump out from the mouth of a leopard fan,
Shocking us with a hell of a leap,
Or a sigh that sounds almost like poetry.
I don’t need a fantastic beast such as the leopard.
At the river mouth by the sea, I feed
A silver hammerhead shark with bits of myself!
(Translated by Duck Yard Lyricists, a group of devoted poetry lovers: Meifu Wang, Michael Soper & Guy Hibbert)
Fallen Leaves
Like leaves in the mountains
They drift not far, but in silence
While they fall to the ground a temple stands
Out of the world, with newly painted red eaves
Closing up the white clouds
At the moment leaves in the city
Were piled up for burning
With blue smoke out
Obviously, the flame and the shouting
In suppression are kept
At the moment if a bell
Rings, a person goes slowly down the hill
He’s got it again
The smell of ashes!
(Translated by Zhang Qiang)
Silhouettes on the Water
On the surface of the running water, I was recognized by some silhouettes
Such as people with different gaits, stampeding pigeons
The square customs house or the far estuary bridge……
They recognized me, and in their eyes I must be
A silhouette that missed the running water
They are on the water, suddenly slowing down, like my relatives
Tearing themselves away from me, and staring at me the last few times
Suddenly, I felt sad and again abandoned to the world!
(Translated by Zhang Qiang)
Eating Chewing Tobacco in Lucknow
So far away from the capital city, a few dynasties fell and died on the way
By being chased and killed by cold weapons or committing suicide. Finally
They disappeared with the round-trip ways.
The borderline of the big capital city of Uttar Pradesh was partly hidden
And partly visible; War events were as distant and indistinct as letters from
Home
Time was coaxed and pestered in fragrance and delicious foods and
Became small fragments like the loose and light sunshine
3000 beauties lived together in the city. Only a kathak dance unarmed the
Soldiers of border defense
A cup of grief of parting was like silver coins completely and momentarily
Dispersed out of a red, fragrant, green and soft bag
Foreigners were roaming among streets and alleys with steps that sound
Brisk, unhurried and even elegant just like in the past
Along the well-decorated street constructed in old time, the traditional
Chewing-tobaccos were on sale in small bags of painted sculpture.
In the mouth, the pieces of tobacco were hard like a stone. A kind of coarse
And unsmooth feeling of taste and smell counterattacked the brains from
The mouth cavity; that was a kind of inner-overturn and stun…
In her well-known leisure and amusement, Lucknow made me almost out
Of breath suddenly!
(Translated by Chen Lidong)
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