Yang Lian

倒退的历史诗——给香港

Poems on Turning Back History
for Hong Kong


1
ocean waves polished snow-bright     matching helmets     shields
gulf like a laid-down high-rise     collapses into
the dark rising and falling     a neon other shore   
lightly rippling     the mirage embraces us and our rippling
one incarnadine-feathered seagull bobs by
one million glass curtain walls polished snow-bright     reflect history

2
once again     we fall into a death-trap
for a perfectly ordinary morning     we put on
the bloody clothes of thirty years ago     running bodies
turn into sea breezes     the black of gas blocks all directions
a street has no beginning     only countless masked endings are left
trip and fall     who hasn’t experienced a shattered life in the word fate?

3
everybody is a barricade     a road block
fiercely blocking ourselves     suffering wounds not worth it
enduring unendurable pain     fear     filled-up fire hoses
spit bitter salty blue     inescapable rain
always a swollen square     like a damp seedbed
death’s desire madly sprouts carrion

4
once again     the convex lens of the ocean’s ancient teardrop
weeps our tears     those resigned to their fate    recognise
storm’s onomatopoeia     retelling the pitter-patter of ruin
hearts    wake at morning to die and die again pushing at walls
dark that motionless struggles     carefully sculpted to its limits
flight and pursuit are the same gesture

5
you all have a history class
             we have time that has been excised
you all display a constellation of skulls
             we gouge eyes out and join shadows
all your bronze goblets dazzle bodies
             our blood has been brewed into aesthetics

6
does the eyeball’s bubble only see something when it bursts?
where does a port filled with the stink of dead fish sail to?
isn’t senility shrivelled back into the past preposterous?
who is the submarine Mandelstam surfacing to meet?
how do steel vines intercept curses honed in the heart?
a bad poem     does it include a worse reality?

7
the glass canyon overflows with multicoloured water
turbulent yet silent     shoving at the shore
glass sky like an endlessly fallen landmass
multicolour pouring rain     collapses the feel of snow in the south
glass snow-bright     every reflected junction reversing into
the grave’s dead corner     opens out in multicoloured mushrooms

8
a foundling of time
unsure if it’s water or glass
coldly shoots light     delivers blank solids
in the hillside graveyard my headstone is damp
my name is damp     alive and climbing to
indifferent desolate absolute heights

9
the ocean’s wilderness on all sides
strangles a tiny islet of people     throats black and blue
the old wound     silting up a midnight that acts calm
terror needs this corner     darkness
the thicker the better     saltwater-soaked it skips questions
what times?     whose shame?

10
imagine one face beside a sea of faces     like a little shore
prettily rising     the daughter leads by the hand
a lost history bewildering to eye-witnesses
so many truncheons are driving time’s cattle in circles
crowds with lost faces are fighting     tamping down the same dirty stains
in contrast to you     a torn scrap of paper flutters by quite alone

11
where can we still turn back to?
the tar underfoot splits     seawater surges pitch-black
pours back into us like we are poured back into
the neon waterfall ghosts abruptly switch on
the terracotta warrior insists on kneeling     looks forward two millennia
the bow and arrow he held vanished into thin air

12
glass gravestone gleaming among ocean waves   ruin escorts it
one more dying day gone missing     beforehand forgets it
the foamy self seeps into foamy others     painlessly erases it
poetry     a rusty ferry boat     to its heart’s content invents it
rotted-out corpses goosestep     never lacking an anniversary to cheer it
ocean’s one-page will and testament rolls alongside     never anyone reading it   
 

      9     Acknowledgements
      11     Introduction by Ai Weiwei

一，短诗  SHORT POEMS:

         根
    17     Root

        致身边消失的陌生人——给武汉
     19     To the Vanished Stranger Beside Us: Written for Wuhan

        死海
    20     Dead Sea

        青草祭
    22     Green Grass Offering

        虚构·2020
    24     Fiction 2020

        魇·2020
    25     Nightmares 2020

        瘟疫实验室 （一——三）
    28     Plague Laboratory （1-3）

        一只名叫“希望”的瓮
    31     An Urn Called ‘Hope’

        奥威尔的新年
    32     Orwellian New Year

        奥维德的泉水
    34    Ovid’s Spring Water

        落：肖像
    35     Falling: A Portrait

        2019年12月19月: 冬至和诗
    37     19th December 2019: A Response Poem of the Winter Solstice

        柏林安哈尔特火车站大门
    39     Berlin Anhalter Bahnhof Main Gate

        树林中的铁轨
    41     Railway Tracks in the Woods

        音乐会上的狐狸幽灵
    43     Phantom Foxes at a Concert

        羽毛·石头
    45     Feather – Stone

         石头·羽毛
    46     Stone – Feather

        “金沙，请听二十秒钟雨声”
    47     ‘Jinsha, Please Listen to 20 Seconds of Rain’

        在上博撫摸一只西周编钟
    49     Touching a Set of Western Zhou Dynasty Bells in Shanghai Museum

        听溥雪斋弹《梅花三弄》
    50     Listening to Pu Xuezhai Playing Three Plum Blossom Airs

        溆浦美人夜歌
    52     Xupu Beauty Nocturne

        星期一，以西湖为背景
    54     Monday, with West Lake for a Backdrop

        邋遢大士九十歌
    56     Messmaster 90 Song

        海上家书
    58     Letter Home from at Sea

        病毒隔离中的生日华尔兹（一——五）
    60     Birthday Waltz in Virus Isolation (1-5)

        名字的诞生
    63     Birth of a Name
        汕大，封存的家书
    65     Shantou University: A Sealed Letter Home

        绚丽的不可解封之诗
    66     Magnificent Nonblockable Poem

         听茶 （一）
    68     Hear Tea (1)

         听茶 （二）
    69     Hear Tea (2)

        念湖
    70     Lake Longing

        白千层
    72     A Thousand White Layers

        御花园·零与夜
    73     Imperial Garden. Zero and Night

        御花园·孔雀
    74    Imperial Garden. Peacock

        御花园·牡蛎
    75     Imperial Garden. Oyster

        御花园·铜舟
    76     Imperial Garden. Bronze Boat

        御花园·墨乐
    77     Imperial Garden. Music of Ink

        御花园·来德之风
    78     Imperial Garden. Laide’s Wind

        御花园·玉圭
    79     Imperial Garden. Jade Tablet

        御花园·石器时代
    80     Imperial Garden. Stone Age

        御花园·最后的
    81     Imperial Garden. Final

        罪恶研究
    82     Researching Evil

        反安魂曲
    86     Anti-requiem


二，组诗  SEQUENCES

        轮回·灵骨塔（98行）
    91     Reincarnation – Stupa (98 Lines)

        倒退的历史诗
    95     Poems on Turning Back History

        韩退之中元节，或从四面八方坍塌到我们头上的时光
    98     Han (Retreater) Yu’s Hungry Ghost Day
        Or, Time That Collapses onto Our Heads from All Sides

        高福里中元节，上海背影之歌
    102     Hungry Ghost Day at South Gate
        Or, A Song of the Back View of Shanghai

        鹤乡
    107     Crane Land

        大夫，我是你身边一滴水
    111     Master, I’m a Drop of Water by Your Side


三，长诗  LONG POEMS

        一座向下修建的塔
    119     A Tower Built Downwards


        迷宫
    137     Labyrinth


        奥威尔的新年（诗剧版本）
    151     Orwell’s New Year – A Verse Drama

‘Yang Lian is one of the most astonishing poets I’ve read for years. He has a westernist, modernist sensibility allied with an ancient Chinese, almost shamanistic one. He can both excite and frighten you – like MacDiarmid meets Rilke with Samurai sword drawn!’ – W.N. Herbert, Scotsman.

‘Yang Lian distinguishes himself in representing the pain of life caught in between historic eras…a new version of an old issue for world literature as well as Chinese literature is proposed: how to continue writing, relying on individual rather than enforced communal inspiration.’ – Allen Ginsberg

‘It wouldn’t surprise me if he became a future Nobel Laureate. His style is one of extraordinary grandeur and ambition…a monumental drive, a sensuous strength and intellectual clarity.’ – David Morley, Stand