When I am on the mountaintop, I will overlook other mountains
Zhang Zhi, a renowned poet from China, who writes with pen name Diablo, shares his poems
Zhang Zhi, born in Phoenix Town of Baxian County, Sichuan Province in 1965, is a poet, critic, translator and publisher in contemporary China. His pen name is Diablo, English name is Arthur Zhang. His ancestral place is Nan’an of Chongqing City. He is a doctor of literature and current president of the International Poetry Translation and Research Centre, editor-in-chief of Rendition of International Poetry Quarterly (multilingual) & the English edition of World Poetry Yearbook, and advisor to the Center for Globalization of Chinese Poetry of Foreign Languages College, Nankai University. He began to publish his literary and translation works since 1986. Some of his literary works have been translated into more than forty foreign languages. He has ever won Literature prizes from Greece, Brazil, America, Israel, France, India, Italy, Austria, Lebanon, Macedonia, Russia, Japan, Egypt, Belgium, Armenia, and Kyrgyzstan. His main works include poetry collections such as RECEITA (Portuguese-English-Chinese), SELECTED POEMS OF DIABLO (English), POETRY BY ZHANG ZHI (German-English-Portuguese), Selected Poems of Diablo (Chinese-English), A Jigsaw Picture of the World (Albanian), Feu Follet On Paper (Arabic), Poison (Arabic), and The Mirror Image of Ghost City (Serbian), collection of poetry criticism entitled Series Essays on Avant-Garde Chinese Poets, and poetry translation, Selected Poems of Tareq Samin (English-Chinese), My Secret Lover, You (Chinese) , Lotus Rays (Russian-English-Chinese), and translated a novel (Russian-Chinese), etc. In addition, he has edited Selected Poems of Contemporary International Poets (English-Chinese), Selected New Chinese Poems of 20th Century (Chinese-English), A Dictionary of Contemporary International Poets (multilingual), Chinese-English Textbook 300 New Chinese Poems (1917—2012), and Century-Old Classics·300 New Chinese Poems (1917-2016), etc.
THE MANUSCRIPT AGE
Treading Mt. Tai under his feet
Old Tu Fu
Gave two lines
“When I am on the mountaintop
I will overlook other mountains”
Lying on the mountaintop and drunk
Gave a cry
“I’ll add height to the earth
With my genital”
Sitting at the foot of the mountain
Old Diablo
Is silent –
No one knows
He is taken by the throat
By an invisible country.
***
THE DOOMSDAY
These years
You peddle yourself to the world
Like a politician
More like an old hand in love affairs
These years
You and the world flatter one another
Like a pair of actors
More like a pair of gays
Oh, these years
You sleep together with the world
But you have known nothing about the world
Oh, these years
The Aeolian bells in heaven are like a drunkard
Limping along the tunnel of time.
_____________________
Prepared by Angela Kosta Academic, journalist, writer, poet, essayist, literary critic, editor, translator
