He knows the fog will dissipate
And then he will sit down to rest
A few insects on a flower
Glimmering, whispering softly…
Ma Yongbo, an acclaimed poet from China, shares his poetry
Ma Yongbo was born in 1964, living in Nanjing, China. He is Ph.D., representative of Chinese avant-garde poetry, and a leading scholar in Anglo-American poetry. He has published over eighty original works and translations since 1986 including 7 poetry collections. He focused on translating and teaching Anglo-American poetry and prose including the work of Dickinson, Whitman, Stevens, Pound, Williams, and Ashbery. He recently published a complete translation of Moby Dick, which has sold over half a million copies. He teaches at Nanjing University of Science and Technology. The Collected Poems of Ma Yongbo (four volumes, Eastern Publishing Centre, 2024) comprising 1178 poems, celebrate 40 years of writing poetry.
Kafka
Evening falls, and the rain begins
Kafka’s gray wool coat
Deepens in color
His cane sinks into the mud
The darkness in his eye sockets
Reveals many laugh lines from years past
He walks across the railway bridge
To greet a young girl
The thick fog quickly obscures everything
He’s aged, otherwise he wouldn’t smile at people like this
The rain falls, droplets rolling off his collar
Creating islands in his heart
Writing is futile now
He knows the fog will dissipate
And then he will sit down to rest
A few insects on a flower
Glimmering, whispering softly.
***
Walt Whitman
You and I in America
One afternoon on a farm
The meadow is pure white and soft
Distant mountains are small and clear
A cow emerges from the gate
A girl draws a long white line on the wall
Once I was a child
Yesterday I had grown up
You taught me to ride a horse
Rush through groups of girls
Taught me to squint in the sunlight
Look out over the prairie where the storm is coming
Under the ancestral grand porch
The east wind blows the horse’s mane
At this moment, you are more like my elder brother
We rest on the same rock
Place our hands on the grass
Today, I am no longer a child
No longer gazing at the clouds on the horizon
No longer just smiling
I want to talk to you on the pure white meadow
Talk about something
Put our feet on the distant mountains
***
Pablo Neruda
In winter, you go to find him
On the snow-covered streets of Prague
You stand in front of a house
The door is locked, he is talking with time
Because of the cold, you hide in a cinema
The wounded stones lose their language
You stand at the corner waiting for him to pass
You are looking for him by the sea
He should be everywhere you go
Talking with those wounded stones
Or a boy smiling alone
That voice is like your own face
You don’t need to look for him
You might meet him crossing the streets or coal mines
You can also ride on a wooden chair
Say, I love you, please come out
He will then say something loudly and come to the yard
Carrying the scent of fish and saltpeter
At that moment, you must prepare firewood
The winters in Prague are very cold
In front of the house where the heroes departed,
He had stood for a long time
______________
