A Xiang: Mum

　　　Mum
　　　　　　　by A Xiang　tr. Fan Jinghua
Then the sky becomes brighter and brighter, but there are still things in formation
She does not speak,
Eyes intent on me.
White hair drops over the forehead. She has watched her palms for a long time,
From which pleasing scent perspires.
Sound and dust float in the air
Until I extricate myself from a shadow
And tread off on dewdrops.
Most of the time, birds would swoop down in the yard
And before their arrival
There lies an expansion of quiet sunlight. Also trees and lilies, and a lawn she loves.
She came from the East of the Mountains, now feeling obscurer and obscurer.
She refuses to engage in a dialogue with me.
　　　　　　　　　　　March 20, 2008

　　　妈妈
　　　　　　　阿翔
直到天空慢慢明亮起来，有些东西尚未成形
她不说话
只是看着我。
白发垂直到额头。她花了漫长的时间观察手心
手心沁出美丽的芳香
声音和灰尘浮在空中
直到我脱离阴影
踏露水而去。
更多的时侯鸟突然间落到院子里
先于鸟儿的
是一片安静的阳光，有树木，百合和她喜欢的草地。
她来自山东，感觉自己越来越模糊
她拒绝和我对话。
　　　　　　　　　2008年3月20日

　　Our contemporary knowledge of psychology may corner us. We know that nowadays a son’s representation of his love toward the mother is always under embarrassing scrutiny. This perhaps is even more embarrassing to Chinese men, considering that the Chinese males are disciplined to reserve their emotions. But poets are too weak a group of bread-earners to take care of the mothers, except that they express their feelings in words. Words, however, are usually a form of pacifiers in place of something “real.”

　　I always harbor a kind of self-reproach for not having hugged my mother. I always cherish my mother’s broad smile when she watches my younger sister hanging on my back before her husband and my wife, and her ten-year-old son would tease her. This is something about Chinese men, and the daughter married off is no longer the water thrown out. Instead, she usually has some kind of privilege.
　　One of my “Am-female” friends once chastised me for my “deep emotion runs still” theory, and still it seems that Chinese men are rigidly apathetic. One Chinese new immigrant professor has always been complained by his daughter that he does not love her as much as her mother does, since her mother, born and educated in China, never grudges showering her with “Sweetie,” “Love” and “Darling,” and “Dear”-ing everything of her. When in the countryside at least, we are a little too reverent to show our love toward Mother for fear that she would feel uneasy, however much we have been exposed to the outside world and cultures.

　　In this poem, A Xiang basically negates the notion of representable or even speakable love from an adult son to his mother. What links between them is the look, and silence tells more, more so on the part of the mother. There is no real dialogue between an adult son and his mother in China, if not in every culture, but love is pervasive. One personal note about A Xiang: he has lost much of his hearing.
　　The spaciousness and the narrowness in the poem may comprise a unique adjacent pair for the discourse of mother-son relation. We can sort out two groups of words. One group is about the mother, the other the son. The former points to the spacious, and the latter represents the mobile “concrete” objects. This comparison itself can be a metaphor for the foetus in the womb. Henceforth, the first line sets a key note for the poem. The brighter and brighter sky embraces something in formation. Then, the scent from the palms, the sound and dust in the air, and the birds in a yard. The things that move are held without grip by what exists as a still presence. A son who comes back to his mother is always a straying child. So was a man away from home called a 游子 wandering son, as was a woman married off called the water thrown out of the gate. When this woman from the East of the Mountains (Shandong Province?) becomes increasingly forgetful about where her root was, this means that she has become the original root for the son.

　　　A Xiang 阿翔 as one of the Faces of Chinese Poetry exhibition (2008)

几日前的英文，当时写得很顺，但是想用中文写的时候，觉得再说一遍似乎就有点不真切。今天尽力译成中文。

　　时至今日，我们的心理学知识已经令我们面对情感的时候感到窘迫。我们明白一个儿子对于母亲的爱以及表述也总是会受到令人尴尬的详析。考虑到中国男性一直被规训，要善于缄默，那样的分析于中国男人似乎更为尴尬。诗人似乎弱于生存，不是挣面包的强者，更加不会赡老，也只能用语言表述自己的情感。不过，语言通常只是一种抚慰剂，是代替“真品”的橡皮奶头而已。

[以下两段请勿转载]
　　我总是心存一种怯弱的自责，自己没有拥抱过母亲。我记得我妹妹在她丈夫和我妻子面前，吊在我的后背上，她十岁的儿子一边取笑她一边走过来和我闹，我妈妈笑得那么宽阔。这是永远无法忘记的。这是当代中国的男人。而嫁出去的女儿也不再是泼出去的水，反而有某种特权。
　　我有一个“美-女”朋友曾经强烈指斥我所谓的“情深不显于形色”纯属谬论，当然，在西方文化下中国男人总还是显得有点冷硬淡漠。另一个在美国执教多年的朋友总被他女儿指责不够爱她，因为他不像那位妈妈那样；虽说她妈妈也是中国生中国长，但是却从不吝啬于甜心蜜糖亲爱的那样达令不绝。然而，无论我们接受了多少外部世界和文化的影响，起码在回到农村地区时，我们往往将对于母亲的爱虔诚得敬畏，生怕她感到有一丝难以习惯。^o^

　　在这首诗里，阿翔基本上否定了一个成年儿子对于母亲之爱的可表述性或者可说出性。他们之间的联系只是观注，沉默的蕴含更深，在母亲这边更加如此。成人儿子与母亲之间没有真正的对话，这即使不是所有文化中的普遍现象，起码可以说在中国如此；但是，爱却是深切真确的。一个私人特征：阿翔几乎失聪了。
　　这首诗中的宽阔和狭窄构成了母子关系话语中的一个独特的相邻对。我们可以通过两组词义进行描述。“宽敞”的语义指向母亲，指向儿子的则显示为游移的实在之物。这一种对比本身也就可以成为胎儿与子宫的暗喻。因此，第一行就已经为这首诗定了基调。那越来越明亮的天空怀抱着正在成形的东西。后面则有：手心的香味、空中的声音与灰尘、院子里的鸟儿。一个静穆的在场者抓住了游移之物，但是根本无须用力。儿子回到母亲身边，永远是一只迷途之鸟。一个远离家乡的男人被称为游子（游荡之子），一个被嫁出去的女人被称为泼出去的水。然而，这个从“山之东”来的女人（山东省?），似乎越来越忘记了自己的来处，这不也正说明她自身就是游子的原始之根么？