Wang Xiaoni: The Moonlight is Really White

　　The Moonlight is Really White
　　　　　　　　　by Wang Xiaoni　tr. Fan Jinghua

The deep night moon shines to the bones of everything.

I breathe in its bluish white air.
The trivial cuticle and hair of the human world
Become firebugs that keep falling down.
This city, a dead skeleton.

No life
Deserves the night of such purity.
I lift the curtains slightly apart
And see the sky and earth exchanging silver.
Moonlight makes me forget I am a human being.

In the expansion of this blank color,

the rehearsal of the last scene of life goes soundless.
Moonlight comes to the floor,
But my feet have already become white in advance.


　　月光白得很
　　　　　　王小妮 (1955-)

月亮在深夜照出了一切的骨头。

我呼进了它青白的气息。
人间的琐碎皮毛
变成下坠的萤火虫。
城市这具死去了的骨架。

没有哪个生命
配得上这样纯的夜色。
微微打开窗帘
天地正在眼前交接白银
月光使我忘记我是一个人。

生命的最后一幕
在一片素色里静静地彩排。
月光来到地板上
我的两只脚已经预先白了。

　Wang Xiaoni in Boston (Oct. 11, 2004) 王小妮2004年10月11日于波斯顿

　　This is one of Wang Xiaoni’s best short poems. Wang Xiaoni is perhaps the most accomplished woman poet in contemporary China and received as a poet instead of a woman poet. By a received woman poet I mean that too many women poets are playing up their sexuality. Wang’s language, which can be seen in this poem, is clean, clear and simple, maximizing the quality of contemporary spoken Chinese both in rhythm and image. Two concurrent flows can usually be felt intermingling naturally or spontaneously in her poems that carry the reader along. These two currents, rooted in ancient Chinese poetry as solidness 实 (realness) and abstractness 虚 (emptiness), hypostatize into one body of language on different levels of perception, in the sensory dimension and the psychological.
　　这首诗可谓是王小妮最优秀的短诗之一。王小妮也许是当代中国最有成就但却不是被作为女性诗人而成功的诗人。我所说的女性诗人在此是说有太多的女诗人比较高调或者强调自己诗歌写作的性别特征。王小妮的语言，如这首诗便能看出来，素洁、清澄、简朴，从节奏到意象上最大程度地优化了当代汉语口语。通常可以在她的诗歌中看到两个彼此融合的流，自然而自发地推送着读者。这两种流似乎可说是深得中国古诗审美的技法，一虚一实，但是却能够具体化为诗歌这个语言身体，在感官和心理感觉这两个层面上同时运作。

Wang Xiaoni was born in 1955 in Changchun, Jilin Province in the northeastern area of China, and graduated from Department of Chinese in Jilin University in 1982. From 1985, she moved to Shenzhen to join her husband XU Jingya, a critic of contemporary Chinese poetry. She writes poetry, prose, and fiction, and has been awarded many prizes. They have a son and she is now a professor of Hainan University.