Nanren: The Shepherd & Lightness

　Nanren's Two Poems: The Shepherd & Lightness

　　牧羊人
　　　　　南人　　
我是一匹牵着羊群的狼
它们的祖辈早已被我吃光
因为这一个错误
我不得不将这群可怜的羊儿抚养
青青的草原上我老眼昏花
握紧赶羊的鞭儿
走进那一片夕阳

　　The Shepherd
　　　　　　　by Nanren tr. Fan Jinghua
I am a wolf, attending to a herd of sheep
after I have eaten up all their ancestors
And because of this blunder
I have to foster this poor stock
The greenness of the grass makes me dizzy
And I, with a whip in my grip
Walk into the last piece of sunrays

　　轻
　　　　　南人　作
拿起一把剪刀
朝照片上长得没有哪儿不像我的那个家伙的
脑袋
一刀剪去

而剩下的事情应该如何了结
就这样手持凶器面对一张剪去脑袋的照片
像一个自杀后的木偶

刚满一岁的女儿走过来
从我的手中将剪刀拿走

在一片空空旷旷的花园里
她用一件凶器当作自己的玩具

　　Lightness
　　　　　　by Nanren tr. Fan Jinghua
With a pair of scissors
I stab into a photo and cut out a head of a guy who
looks exactly
like me

The rest of the case comes to its own end
As I hold the criminal tools, standing in front of a portrait without a head
I am like a puppet accomplished a suicide

My one-year-old daughter comes along
and takes from my hand the scissors

In a garden where there is nothing but emptiness
She uses my criminal tools as her toys

About the poet:
　　Nanren (“Southern Man”), pseudonym of YU Xi, was born in 1972 in a county from Jiangsu, China. He majored in Chinese in Beijing Normal University from 1990, and perhaps because of this he is associated with the so-called The Lower Body poet group, many key figures of which are also from that University. However, it seems that his poetry before 1996 does not show as many shared features with the group as his later work, and the poems here are from the earlier period.

　　南人，1972年生，原名于希，江苏泰县人，1990年入北京师范大学中文系，不知何时成为下半身的同人。他的诗有一种看似轻松的深沉，尤其是1996年前的作品，似乎不像他后来的作品那样与下半身写作更加一致，以上两首诗选自他的早期诗歌。