Fan Jinghua: Chronicles of Love in Nanjing

　　　Chronicles of Love in Nanjing

Across a ditch, the hidden path resumes itself, passing by a pond, home
to a flock of wild ducks, and this trail
bypasses the ticket office and entrance to a tourist resort.
There, the graveyards of celebrities from the older dynasties are small-scale plazas,
at dusk, haunted by romance, remembrance and oblivion.
When people have left, what is left behind?
Which Hippocratic type will always tread the same often-traveled ruts and get stuck?
Spring warmth etches into wedges the thin ice around the Waterfront Pavilion stilts,
And pigeons cuckoo in the aromatized Herbal Garden where young lovers
Giggle behind the bushes and give dirty looks to whomever passing their way.
--Fools rush fast in pre-doomed love.

Pollen allergy is not his vulnerability but his conduct in the world,
therefore no one around him would suspect
whether his incentive is to undermine the morality of midsummer night
when he sneaks out into the dark.
For instance, at a certain 2 am, in front of the Life-Liberating Pond
of the ancient Cock-Crowing Nunnery, in a pavilion
a pair of arms disappeared into a pair of blouse and skirt, chafing and rubbing,
and he had barely accomplished his lingering walk on the sloping link
along which emptied carts from peddlers of joss sticks and gold-foiled papers are
chained to cherry-trees that stood on the blanket of fallen pinks.
--In the season of no faith, only falling petals are true.

From the rouge-greased moat of this capital of six short-lived dynasties, a frog
crawls out and jumps onto the second-story windowsill.
It holds a lewd posture,
sucking and blowing two air sacs, filling them up with noises.
Passion, when habitually tuned into the verbal, leaves little space
for compression, and he has written lines after lines, only to be written off,
and the frog season fades away without warning.
In southern country where the weather is either sultrily hot or humidly cold, it is hard
to keep the same posture throughout a night, and he turns and twists, finally
pillowing high to revise in his mind the scraps of poems posted on the white wall.
--dove sta memoria. This is where memory is conceived and grows.

The bladders of dawn are bloated when the night rain comes to
a stop, and at this threshold he falls
into half-sleep, visited by black tree trunks and yellow leaves,
as if a terminal love is approaching the climax of breakup
and all the trivialities, previous romantic gestures, are heated up and burning.
Seeds of time, ashes or sarīra, are waiting to be sifted,
the fine grains of memory sieved through, the knots of heart rolling like rocks.
On cooled feet he stands
on the riverbank of time and makes ducks and drakes, seeing
tiny crystal flowers fading and skimming away.
--He has another wet dream, much to his shame.

His friends, even with photochromic spectacles, have laser eyes;
formidable as it is, he is relieved, for he does not need
any disguise, albeit he feels a little cold-shouldered.
Before the desk at the corner of his dormitory, he practices, in the card-playing noises,
doing three things with words from different media—
a book on the left, a writing pad on the right, a boombox playing vissi d’arte vissi d’amore.
When the coloratura turns to a steep slope, his eyes fall on juxtaposed static characters
“a green sea, a blue sky, a heart, night after night” and a longer prosaic line winds
on the pad “dust grows on the sea of my heart as each dusk gives way to the dark
while your black hair is buoyantly smiling to spring breezes over the water.”
--As wild geese are nowhere to chase, who would sit up all the nights for their return?

In the everydayness of uniform variables, a trance is a black hole, sure to lead one
out of time; when he stares at the setting sun,
the autumn leaves have suddenly turned rusty in the Afterglow-Lingering Mount.
The black woman-made turtleneck soothes his professional ailment best,
faucitis from pollen to weather changes, from too much lecturing to chalk sticks.
The silvery chain of the zipper dangles like a tiny tail in and out of his collar,
now cool like a fish, then warmed to his body temperature, and then cool again,
coolness and warmth giving way to each other.
Like a largehead hairtail the Long River lies, down over there,
shimmering like a slate of ice between dark lands where chimneys emit smelly smokes.
--Sensation of coolness is a pleasure privileged for the warm-blooded animal.
　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　April 9-12, 2008


　　　南京：爱情殇事

越过一条小沟，绕开一口住着野鸭的池塘，那一条隐秘的小径
穿过树林，免费进入管制的风景。
前朝名士的墓地都是小小的广场，在黄昏中飘着浪漫、淡忘与湮灭，
人去了，什么会空？
无法从重蹈的覆辙中爬起来的人，多的是哪种体液？
当春风将水榭前的薄冰蚀成楔子，
药物园里，鸽子在薄荷气息中咕咕，树丛半遮的窃笑并不善待路过的人。
——蠢蠢之心陷入注定早殇的爱情。

花粉过敏不是他的病症，而是他的行为准则，
已没有人怀疑他只在盛夏入夜时潜入世界是否包藏诋毁道德的祸心。
例如那个雨夜两点，
鸡鸣古寺的放生池前，一座亭子里有一双膀子伸进一套衬衫和裙子下暗中搓揉，
而他刚刚结束了在庙门前坡道上的徘徊，
卖香火与金箔纸的摊位只剩下红漆涂抹的铁皮车，
被链条锁在樱花树上。
——失信的时节惟有缤纷的落红片片真实。

在这六个短命王朝的都城，护城河上脂粉的浮渣深浅不一；
青蛙爬出今夜，污秽长成了皮肤，蹲伏在二楼窗台，
它稳当当地守持一个下流姿势，来劲地抽吸气泡；
情感一旦被惯性地转化为语言，就再也无法压缩，
他，写下一行又一行被划掉的句子，于是，牛蛙的季节也就过去了。
江南的气候，要么闷骚要么阴冷，只用一种姿势睡一夜觉是艰难的；
他辗转反侧，最后，垫高了枕头，惟有倚卧的姿态可以修改白墙上的诗句贴。
——此乃记忆之生发之所dove sta memoria。

一夜雨声在黎明的鱼脬中停了，醒于未醒的人，睡起了回笼觉，
梦中弥散着潮湿的图像和叶子，
如恋爱末期不成功的行为将颤栗的无穷动颤进了现在。
时间就这样被筛糠一样整合，离析出来的是
种子、灰烬还是舍利？
精细的记忆筛漏了，而滚来滚去的，是难解的心结，如块垒；
时间的河岸上，软泥含水，阴凉着脚底，粗砾用于打水漂，跳出一串小小的碎花。
——他又一次在梦中湿滑，醒来，猥琐地发愣。

朋友们的眼睛，甚至带戴着可以变色的眼镜，也都透出激光，
这反而令他松弛了，
他再也无需掩饰心情，只需稍微掩饰一点心寒。
于是他在八十分的众声喧哗中开发一心三用的静电：
左眼看书、右手写字、耳听花腔女高音的咏叹vissi d'arte, vissi d'amore….
当那嗓音转弯来到一个上坡，他看到 “碧海青天夜夜心”没有介词，他的纸上
蜿蜒着“我的心海一夜又一夜地积着灰尘而你从水中探出满头青丝笑对流经的春风”。
——雁去也，而谁还会彻夜不眠等待旧时相识?

稍一出神，亘古的日常就出现黑洞；
他不过是看了一次完整的落日，栖霞山的叶子便已生锈。
站在山顶上一棵依然丰润的小树旁，黑色
高领毛衣抚慰他的咽喉，花粉和气候转换沾上粉笔和唾液横飞的职业。
已经磨损的颈项上再没有编织它的手指，
一根拉链头拖着几厘米长的尾巴，在领口跳进跳出，
凉丝丝的、没有感觉、凉丝丝的、没有感觉、凉丝丝的、没有感觉……
——凉，是热血动物才有的快感。

长江铺展一条长长的带鱼，白熠熠的细鳞犹如一层薄冰，
两岸广袤的绿色中，烟囱昂然挺起。
哦，江南，散发着隐晦的腥味。哦，氤氲的南京。
　　　　　　　　　　　　　　2008年4月9-12日