Lines beyond touch
Flow along the very heart of a great river
Is it circular?
The flying birds have not told me.
Ai Song is an eminent poet of China
Ai Song, whose real name is Duan Aisong, was born in 1977 and currently resides in Kunming, Yunnan Province. He is a member of the Chinese Writers Association, holds a Master of Arts degree from Beijing Normal University, and is a doctoral candidate at Yunnan University. He was once selected for the 30th Youth Poetry Festival of Poetry Magazine and has published more than ten poetry collections, including Ballad of the River and Shell Storage Vessel, Witch’s Incantation, Moonlight on the Strings, On a Long Journey and Yuanyang in the Sky.
爱松，本名段爱松，1977年出生，现居云南昆明，中国作家协会会员，北京师范大学文学硕士，云南大学博士研究生，曾入选《诗刊》第三十届青春诗会，出版诗集《江水谣与贮贝器》《巫辞》《弦上月光》《在漫长的旅途中》《天上元阳》等十余部。
(Translated by Ma Yongbo)
The Great River
Lines beyond touch
Flow along the very heart of a great river
Is it circular?
The flying birds have not told me.
Lands beyond reach
Throb along the source of a great river
Is it square?
The ants have not told me.
Characters lost for thousands of years
On this dusk,
Don their pictographic robes,
Becoming the golden shadows of our ancestors.
Listen to the river’s damp wind:
It holds hundreds of millions of grains of yellow sand.
Sunlight hangs on its left,
Moonlight rises on its right
The sound of secret whispers
Speeds across the backs of ants and flying birds.
***
大河
无法触摸的线条
沿一条大河正中流淌
它是不是圆形的呢？
飞鸟没有告诉我
无法抵达的土地
沿一条大河源头搏动
它是不是方形的呢？
蚂蚁没有告诉我
丢失了几千年的文字
在这个黄昏
披上象形外衣
成为祖先们金质的影子
听一听大河透湿的风声
它揣着亿万粒黄沙
左边悬挂阳光
右边升起月色
秘密交谈的声音
在蚂蚁和飞鸟的背上飞驰
***
Grain Rain
Grain RainThis is the sound of Father, returning—
This is the sound of Mother, leaving—
This is the sound where Father and Mother blur into one.
This is the sound of never meeting again,
This is the sound that cannot be called out,
This is the sound of you resisting shadows, weeping countless times.
This is the sound of who comes to replace whom,
This is the sound of who can bury whom,
This is the sound that chokes up before death,
This is our ancestors, blown down by the strong wind, facing us.
***
谷雨
这是父亲，归来的声音
这是母亲，离去的声音
这是分不清父亲和母亲的声音
这是无缘再见的声音
这是无法喊出的声音
这是你抵御影子，哭泣无数的声音
这是谁来，替代谁的声音
这是谁能，埋葬谁的声音
这是对着死亡叫不出的声音
这是朝向我们，大风吹落的祖先
***
My Sister in the Mirror
My Sister in the MirrorSister in the mirror, where are you bound?
Fluorescent powder dusts the sunlight, turning it to flame
Draped over you, it sees off the soil of the past,
It is skin, the green seeds you buried,
Fluorescence never sprouts, flickering on and off.
Your small hand, worn old in a man’s grasp
Sister in the mirror, a translucent other body
I pick up a pebble and hurl it into the blue
How damp the whirlpool is; your small hand trails down the tips of your hair,
Sliding into black and white, brushing my narrow eye sockets.
This curved lake surface magnifies you,
A still young girl looming and fading within
The glass forged by time presses down its brow
Are all these just illusions? I call out
Your name echoes once inside my heart.
No scent lingers; the other world is only a single step away from me
The mirror is stretched, on the verge of shattering
Shadows, stacked layer upon layer, you cannot see me pressing my ear
To the lake surface. Cold fish glide through the long corridor,
Their bones lodged in your body, in some year in the mirror.
Oh, mirror, the only wall between times and spaces
Blurred, decayed, it was built before words crumbled
This child, these two children,
Weep alongside the mirror, before the night
Shatters. Sister, where have you gone…
***
镜中的妹妹
镜中的妹妹，你往何方
荧光粉扑在阳光上成了火焰
披在你身上，为过去的泥土
送行，它是皮肤，你掩埋的绿色种子
不发芽的荧光，一闪一闪
你的小手，在一个男人手里变旧
镜中的妹妹，透明的另一个躯体
我捡起一块鹅卵石，扔进蓝色
漩涡多么潮湿，小手顺着发梢
滑进黑白，碰及我狭长的眼骨
这弯曲的湖面，把你放大
静止的少女在里面隐现
时光锻造的玻璃，压低了额头
这些都是虚拟的吗？我喊一声
你的名字，就在我心里答了一遍
没留下任何气味，另一个世界只距我
一步之遥，镜子被撑得快要碎裂
影子，一叠叠一叠，你看不见我把耳朵
贴在湖面，冰冷的鱼穿过长长走廊
鱼刺在你体内，镜中某一年
哦，镜子，时空唯一的墙
模糊，衰颓，它筑在词语破碎
之前，这个孩子，这两个孩子
和镜子一道哭泣，在黑夜
破碎以前，妹妹，你去了何方……
___________________
