Monday, February 11, 2008

Fan Jinghua: Too Heavy to Write a Light-Hearted Rhyme

By the end of lunar year 2007 (late January 2008), China was hit by enormous snowstorms.

  Too Heavy to Write a Light-Hearted Rhyme

This time the snowstorm
Is too heavy, and it falls so thick
That decades of easy winters are indistinguishably melted
This time it exonerates
Neither the countryside nor the cities
Cars are swollen and dead like stacks of straw
Dry wells can not open black mouths to swallow people
This time
Those who like to hang out after dark
Feel genuine bliss in simple domestic life without orgies
During the power failure
Men and wives warm each other on marriage beds
For the first time
Men tell their women spicy stories
In the reflected light from snow
           Feb. 1, 2008

  雪下到无法打油

这一次
雪真的下大了
下出了几十年的茫茫一片
城市与农村都一统地白了
这一次
汽车肿得像草堆一动不动
枯井也不能张开吃人的黑窟窿
这一次
惯于在深夜流连在外的人
庆幸自己不在江湖
早早地上床陪老婆焐腿
男人第一次
就着雪的反光
给妻子讲灯红酒绿的趣事
第一次体会到没有纵情作乐的简朴生活
是一种福分
       2008年2月1日

这首诗的中文版借用了一首耳熟能详的打油诗:
  天地一笼统,白井黑窟窿;黑狗身上白,白狗身上肿。
This poem alludes to a traditional folk rhyme about snow which was reportedly improvised by a certain peddler of cooking oil in Tang Dynasty. Hence, this kind of rhyming quatrains (AAXA) with mundane subject comes to be known as oil-peddler's rhymes. The rhyme goes:
  Sky and earth are an indistinguishable whole,
  Every white well opens a black hole;
  Black dogs become entirely white,
  White dogs turn to swollen lumps.

Compare this with William C Williams' "The Snow Begins":
   The Snow Begins
       William C Williams
A rain of bombs, well placed,
is no less lovely
but this comes gently over all

all crevices are covered
the stalks of
fallen flowers vanish before

this benefice all the garden's
wounds are healed
white, white, white as death

fallen which dignifies it as
no violence ever can
gently and silently in the night.

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