Translated Chinese Poetry: Poems by Lü De'an</title<link rel=stylesheet href=style.css></head>><body><p align=center>Poems by Lü De'an</p><hr> <p>The Hippopotamus<br> <br> <br> the hippo's rising to the surface<br> we're all hoping it'll go on rising<br> once, twice, till we verify its<br> being there, with its sound-slumbering music<br> in winter, its wide-wealthy back<br> requires touching, requires fondling<br> or else, the hippo ought to rise inside of railings<br> like truth's order. but at least the hippo is, at the water's surface, ordering<br> distinguishing its stony wrinkles from the water's wrinkles<br> an absolute necessity<br> its colour of blacknight from the water's colour of glass<br> when the hippo stands still: beneath it a patch of damp dripping shadow<br> this is its watery church house just now left behind<br> its appearance, dreary; its eye-balls like dreams<br> it renews its movement, it resembles midnight's angel<br> on a brick wall it casts there thick shadows from its wings<br> it also resembles a floweret; winter will once more assess it<br> using a sense of loss and a large sheaf of leftover dry grass<br> but just now, the hippo is there<br> here we wait for an end to its submarine prayers<br> in a place no one has ever visited before<br> in that place we are rising, and seeing our own<br> families wrapped up inside clouds and the hippos of summertime<br> they come raindrop-like, drifting near, tumbling down<br> but almost did not touch the ground; there in the water they're<br> accompanying the music. they are cheering<br> while we all vanish. everything as it should be<br> while the world's monumental physical questioning<br> will soon revert to quiet <br> <br> <br> Translation: 2003, Simon Patton</p> <hr> <p>Mountains' Ecstasy <br> <br> <br> this endless range of mountains holds all of our music:<br> a resplendent and motionless tree<br> a patch of azure-intersticed cloud<br> an incinerated plummeting angel<br> its bird-wings be will liquidized, dripping on<br> jumbled stone heaps. therefore<br> we can all listen to the surging of the summits after dark,<br> a black and blurred dark mass<br> come daytime, they're back in their places, listening for orders<br> we can all listen to boulders borne on the mountaintops breeding<br> giving off starlight, while for thousands of years<br> that massive rock weighted down underneath mountains<br> looks in the gloom like some capsized earthen jar<br> with just the right amount of water trickling over it—<br> satisfying time. and yet before you know it<br> all these objects will be turned to nothingness.<br> then that music we all tried so hard to find will vanish<br> we will all once again lie down together<br> accepting dream's touching<br> she cares for our bodies<br> wanting to bear us back to the cradle for boulders that happen to roll down from the mountains<br> she knows appropriate prayers to make them roll back<br> once more mountainwards<br> restored to their stony nature, o stones<br> we hear you: stay where you are—<br> this you and me of springtime <br> <br> <br> Translation: 2003, Simon Patton</p> <hr> <p>Soul Lake <br> <br> <br> Rain's night-long lashing makes the lake listen;<br> Fitfully it tends to lucency.<br> Yet the rippling of bleached lotus-bodies<br> Remains deep-sunk in sighing.<br> <br> Similar things have happened in the pond in my hills,<br> Amidst the flicker of tree reflections, one sees a face at its centre<br> Glimpsed time after time when I've bent down over it.<br> While in a still more faraway, moistened<br> <br> Dream, I see how I walk from the house<br> Watching the house's illusion, but nothing is there,<br> Only the pond on my roof immovably shining,<br> And over this there floats a layer of leaves.<br> <br> Ah, maybe in all of my own recollections of the natural,<br> In still deeper slumbering vagrancy we two once crossed paths;<br> And so, when your pilgrimaging spirit hums gently in the air,<br> I fall down like stones, and, fallen, brim over myself. <br> <br> <br> Translation: 2003, Simon Patton</p> <hr> <p>As Told to the Poet: 1 <br> <br> <br> New York, one Sunday morning,<br> just because I woke late I dreamed lines of poetry.<br> Lines shining bright. Yet not like they were<br> extracted from actuality's drawer<br> and carried furiously in the hands. No, more like<br> the being fallen raindrop-wise from the heavens,<br> in a certain mysterious outskirts, which we ourselves obtained:<br> a poem both lean and lengthened, now bright, now dark,<br> every interval in it<br> resembling the tiny conclusions in the meanings of language.<br> If you ask me But what does it mean?—even that "between the lines"<br> apparently discloses someone's whole life casually described—<br> I can only fall silent. Because when I wake up<br> I'll startle the spirit right now tossing and turning on my bed.<br> For a long time now he's asked for contact and touchdown.<br> His eyes are piously sinking;<br> his torso, however, has been raised to the water's surface! <br> <br> <br> Translation: 2003, Simon Patton</p> <hr> <p>As Told to the Poet: 4 <br> <br> <br> Once, someone far away wrote me a note saying:<br> The wind likes collecting the things you keep on yourself.<br> So what of it? A battered old hat.<br> At that time, I mistook that phrase for a line of poetry.<br> because I liked its Biblical overtones.<br> I looked out of the window, the world was<br> undergoing changes. While poetry's pupils grew small.<br> What I wanted to lose were other things.<br> That day in Egypt, imperceptibly a wind blew up,<br> after the desert yet another desert.<br> Feeling muddle-headed, I bent down to pick up my hat,<br> but watched it distance itself in an instant—only then I realized<br> what renunciation was.<br> But no, hold on! I called and called.<br> Only several paces in front of me, that red-coloured hat<br> stubbornly trundled away like a sun-setting song<br> only to fall at last into the tomb of an Egyptian.<br> The hat by nature seemed to like hiding,<br> today was merely one of many instances,<br> but that expanse of wilderness covered in black holes<br> was also a perfect and well-suited site.<br> There was no one who could convince anyone, besides<br> there was never any question of my staying in this place.<br> A local man (he knew about what had happened)<br> said to me, for the sake of this incident from now on he'd go<br> every day to that black hole and shout out "Hello!"<br> but on that day I suddenly felt there was nothing left<br> that I kept on myself I couldn't let go of. <br> <br> <br> Translation: 2003, Simon Patton</p> <hr></body></html>