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Chen Xianfa is a poet, essayist and journalist born in Anhui Province, China, where he still lives. He has published four books of poems: Death in the Spring (1994), Past Life (2005), Engraving the Tombstone (2011) and Poems in Nines (2018) which was awarded the Lu Xun Literature Prize. A Selected Poems appeared in 2019. He has published two collections of essays, Heichiba Notes (2014 and 2021). Other awards include China’s Top Ten Influential Poets (1998-2008), the Hainan Biennial Poetry Prize (2011), Yuan Kejia Poetry Prize (2013), Tian Wen Poetry Prize (2015) and the Chenzi’ang Poetry Prize (2016).

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Chen Xianfa: Five Poems translated by Martyn Crucefix and Nancy Feng Liang

A WORLD OF BUTTERFLIES

Suddenly, we will lose
all kinds of ways,
every intonation,
struck dumb in the face of things moving quickly towards us.

Speechless, I stand beside a rock,
and displayed on the rock, a butterfly that seems to be dead,
but in a moment it flutters away.

Butterflies are forever changing in a thousand ways,
while I must remain always the same.

I understand it is only my imagining of her
that is her only prison.
She will eventually leak away in a twinkling of the light.

In the evening, butterflies gather round me –
but is it possible that butterflies can instruct us
on how to adapt to a new world
for which there is no single word,
no sole method, no single way,
yet is composed of a lifetime of weeping and telling?

*

蝴蝶的世界 A World of Butterflies

我们会突然地失去
所有的语调
所有的方法
面对朝我们快速移来的事物哑口无言

面对在岩石上，像是死了
一会儿又
翩翩而去的蝴蝶哑口无言

蝴蝶千变万化
而我必须一动不动

我知道，只有我对她的想象
才是她的监狱
她终会漏下一点点光亮

傍 晚 ， 蝴 蝶 覆 盖 我
但 蝴 蝶 能 教 会
我 们 如 何 适 应 一 座
个 字 也 没 有
一 种 方 法 也 没 有
却 终 生 如 泣 如 诉 的 新 世 界 吗 ？

***

MID-AUTUMN

October is the time when the village unveils
its chilly, impoverished body.
The blanket of withered grass now stripped away,
a wildfire burning,
the wounds exposed,
a wasteland of baked brick,
its beating heart disclosed.
At this time of year, I often return to my hometown.
I like to climb the slope of the withered
hillside to look down,
on the very day of the Mid-Autumn Festival,
at five or six o’clock in the evening,
when you’d expect to see the creamy-white smoke
of cooking fires rising above the rooftops.
If, at that moment, there are households to be seen, smokeless, fireless,
then the line of descent in that family’s been broken.
These days, there are markedly fewer chimneys smoking.
When the burden on the earth becomes lighter
the grasses grow
especially quickly and more luxuriantly.

*
中秋 Mid-Autumn

十月是乡村露出
贫寒之躯的时候
枯草的遮蔽解除了
一把野火烧了
伤疤露了出来
废砖头一样的
心跳露了出来
我常在这个时节回乡
我喜欢爬到枯槁的
小山上，看着山下
就在中秋节当天
傍晚五六点钟
乳白色炊烟应该
从那些屋顶升起
此刻清净无火之户
多半是断绝了
这些年炊烟剧减
大地压力变轻
荒草就长得特别的
快，特别的茂盛

***

FIREFLIES

The villagers believe those dying wrongfully accused
turn into fireflies.

I have seen places where tombstones are grouped together,
above crumbling entranceways, in the withered reeds,
and in the air, fireflies dancing.

The terrible silence laid down in the breasts of the powerless.
Still a little strength there, after death,
to illuminate these tiny lanterns,
eventually to offer up some reassurance.

While the glimmering lights of the dead dance in the breeze,
the living find some repose,
for a while, if possible, they take their rest.
The dyke-water rising, day after day.
The long streaks of dew are like lightning flashes
on my rolled-up trouser legs.

But this scorching of the evening breeze – how long
will it go on unaltered? The bitter rod
of authority, how much longer without change?

In this dim light, the poor cock’s crowing, the letting down of breast milk,
these dark riverbanks are forever secure.

*
萤火虫 Fireflies

乡亲们认为含冤而死的
人会变成萤火虫

我看见墓碑群集之地
敝败的门户上，枯苇丛中
萤火虫漫天飞舞

弱者胸中可怕的缄默
死后仍存有一丝力气把
这小灯笼点亮
又难免让人心安

死者的微光迎风而舞之时
活着的人应当休息
如果可能，要长久地休息—
大坝日复一日涌起
我高高卷起的裤脚上
露水如电

但炙热的晚风请
不要停下来。 权力苦涩的
棍棒也不要停下来

夜间河岸因这幽暗之光也因
贫寒的鸡鸣和乳汁得以永固

***

SICKNESS OF A TEACHER

Very often, I sense a sickness in my own language,
sometimes a sickness of unknown origin.
Gaze at it for a long while, yet there’s no rush to cure it
because the kindness of language ultimately depends upon it.

So then, what can it be, this kindness of language?
It is a freshly cut and fragrant-smelling lemon.
Or it may be that no such lemon exists.
In which case, I must trace her non-existence.

*
以病为师 Sickness as Teacher

经常地，我觉得自己的语言病了
有些是来历不明的病
凝视但不必急于治愈
因为语言的善，最终有赖它的驱动

那么，什么是语言的善呢
它是刚剖开、香未尽的柠檬
也可能并不存在这只柠檬
但我必须追踪她的不存在

***

SOLITARY, CERULEAN ISLAND

Italo Calvino says people weighed down by heavy burdens
rush impetuously to what is light,

becoming fragments. In tearing themselves into smaller pieces,
they discover the joy of knowing themselves.

We are only strong enough to secure ourselves
to a single piece, to anchor ourselves

to the splintering of a branch. Writing. Often dreaming –
to gather fleeting, warm currents round misfortune.

I have the sensation of inhabiting
an island surrounded by

a cerulean blue – such a colour as only ever arises
out of profound rejection or deepest ennui.

*
孤岛的蔚蓝 Solitary, Cerulean, Island

卡尔维诺说，重负之下人们
会奋不顾身扑向某种轻

成为碎片。 在把自己撕成更小
碎片的快慰中认识自我

我们的力量只够在一块
碎片上固定自己

折枝。 写作。 频繁做梦—
围绕不幸构成短暂的暖流

感觉自己在孤岛上
岛的四周是

很深的拒绝或很深的厌倦
才能形成的那种蔚蓝

Note: These poems by Chen Xianfa were first published in Chinese in 2018. All rights to publication have been secured.

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Translators

Martyn Crucefix has recently published Cargo of Limbs (Hercules Editions, 2019) and The Lovely Disciplines (Seren, 2017). These Numbered Days, translations of the poems of Peter Huchel (Shearsman, 2019) won the Schlegel-Tieck Translation Prize, 2020. He has also published Daodejing – a new version in English (Enitharmon, 2016). A Rilke Selected will be published by Pushkin Press in 2023. A translation of essays by Lutz Seiler, Sundays I Thought of God, is due from And Other Stories in 2023. He is currently a Royal Literary Fund Fellow at The British Library and blogs on poetry, translation and teaching at http://www.martyncrucefix.com

Nancy Feng Liang –is a bilingual poet and translator living in Massachusetts and North Carolina. She has translated Henry David Thoreau’s Wild Fruits into Chinese (published by China’s Culture and Development Press in 2018) and Chen Xianfa’s Poems in Nines (publ. in China by Anhui Education Press, 2018). Her most recent poetry collection, Qi Cun Tie, was published by Taiwan Showwe Press, 2020. She graduated from Harvard University with a Master’s degree in 2004.

A selection of poems by Chen Xianfa tr. by MC and NFL recently won the Columbia Journal 2022 Spring Translation Prize.
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