Fan Jinghua: Variations on "The Love Song of a Fictive Poet"
Variations on “The Love Song of a Fictive Poet”I
Ten years. Another stretch of blankness starts and ends
Under the steady progress of the routine.
Happy like water plants, people drift along
From Food First to Tea Soak, where the sun pours down
Hesitant desires of an unappeasable disciplined husband and once stranded lover.
Nothing can be said but spurts of some scum on a deserted beach of romance,
When they take unnecessary sips of the cooling liquid while puffing away
The ever rising tealeaves before the final renewal of water.
Pills of stewed medicine melt in the mouth
That tries to find words encouraging and light-hearted.
II
One cannot lose what one has vainly pursued but be cut short and into pieces.
Dear, I was, am and will be. In pieces, in cadence.
Like grains of dust that long to merge, driven by some force molecular.
Want wants itself in the end that does not end. I want you, my dear one, because
Want never ends. What I want becomes the want of you, for the rest of a restless life,
A life behind this one, benchmarked by your name that I write into abbreviations.
III
I, a fictive poet, process words
Of a foreign language
That is official in a country of my own
Where only one green card is issued for the alien.
Visitor’s pass is void upon exit,
No multiple-entry, no renewal, no reapplications.
You are ineligible to my country,
And my words are open to any interpretations, however farfetched.
IV
For it is written in the sutra, sensationism is mine; I will respond.
That woman in another beardless man’s arms will never attain the spiritual height
As postulated by me, but it is universally acknowledged
Loss can be got used to, for time is a better healer to losers.
Those who do not get with easy efforts do not deserve,
The lesser mortals are born to find solace in self-mockery and theorization
About the desire to possess. Or at least some will so try,
To low-key their loss by putting on a low-key air of a guru.
Dearly beloved, indulge yourselves in your chauvinistic king
While thinking of me occasionally as if missing me is incidental.
Bliss of marriage between vanity and pride is entirely a matter of chance
Balanced by desires of fast, and only in nirvana do we break apart.
V
Yesterday is night when I see your smile soaked in the sunbeam in the doorway,
Your explosive loose curls blocking the too wide bed in the room,
On which I could have worked out the fantasy that I have practiced for a long time.
You and me, salt and sorrow between skins.
Above the valley of layered autumn, hovering blue is clearing and stilling its distilled purity.
When you close the window to me and switch to your king, my eyes
Downcast, my penis hardens like a cornucopia,
And I jerk off my saddest juice, your pictured dove gaze on my monitor.
I lie down, sagged and naked, spooning with my woman,
Her mutters drowned in the tropical storm howling outside.
Two ten-year blank stretches ago, my hand groped on your body
For stones of love that would now make your favorite necklaces, brooches or barrettes.
VI
Love is a shadow, and everyone knows this is a metaphor but ambiguity is not its beauty.
It comes when it comes, but it eludes when pointed at, like a cloud.
So many souls lost on its treacherous commuting trips on a slow night train.
He who stands by the window at dusk courts evil spirits, and by midnight
He could not even find a sandman to flirt.
He would draw a dancing skeleton and give himself up to words to describe the flesh.
So spacious it is in the hole of words that he wishes to leave his body there,
But there are no virgin tears to sluice down his soul into his mouth.
Unclaimed body cannot survive a day, exposed to the sun and consumed by worming grasses.
He will become mushrooms for Little Red Riding Hood who unwittingly gives an unfair start
To the mouth that swallows her. Yes, the evil one will die (who does not?)
But it is always the naïve ones who suffer the most, from loving, and trade off love with tears.
VII
How deep should one drown oneself in the silence of the great majority
To keep oneself guilt-free and safe?
To love thyself without self-discrimination and knowledge, is it enough?
How clammed up should one keep about the never-gotten and never-forgotten
So that one can always persuade oneself to be flamboyant and buoyant
Undulating along the drift of unknowingness like having fun on a waterbed?
He who has a family to support or be supported by, a woman to love or be loved by,
And at least a body to work and to be worked, everyday, may count himself lucky.
No matter how negligible he is, he is a high-maintenance piece of screw,
Indispensable to a very few, and there must be someone among them
Waiting for him, under a leafless tree by the yellow brick road
To The Reinforced Kingdom of Great Harmony and Lesser Suffocations.
Two ten-year latency period of amnesia is almost over,
And memory is now being systematically rewritten by grids of red flags and firework.
They also install innumerable fire extinguishers, as storms of sand and snow are unavoidable.
The wind has always been benign, and each day a new sun rises to announce their progress.
The exiled angry young men are returning to the great cradle one by one,
Where the over-slept cats, attracted by distance, offer pillows and mattress, gratis.
No Atlas to shoulder boulders for Sisyphus, there is no slope to heaven but cliffs
On which Seven Commandments of the Wingless are writ,
With Amendments semi-covered by wolfberry shrubs over the clefts.
To shelter it from erosion, sixty-seven majestic pillars stand at a two-body’s distance
From the stern wall of escarpment, to which snails stick their houses and their boneless bodies
With saliva, like barnacles on a ship in its mossed grandeur.
Midway on their life’s journey through a jungle, parent snails, for fear that when they are dying
Their words would be too lenient, break to their sons and daughters
The truth only the dead will know better
That neighbors are steppingstones, their bodies stoppers to the three representative beasts.
Statistics is truer than truth, and anyone alive and kicking in the muddy bed
Is enjoyed, unless suicided, with the average value of social satisfaction.
The Gini coefficient between births and partners is to be pre-archived as required
For reference index only, and there is no injunction to fruitless procreative activities,
As this is the basic right for the non-oviparous.
Free fuck is at everyone’s own discretion, and never try this at home.
Privacy takes priority over continental law, not limited to the virtual reality.
VIII
Behind the dialogue boxes flickering in a dark room, everyone is beautiful and gallant,
With boundless imagination, updated with the most recent version.
A mortal being belonging to the human race that sets up a high morality for everyone to fail
Has every potential for us to marvel with the agape of an open mouth.
With love, anyone can be anyone else, but there is only one origin in human flesh.
To be a cosplayer, go eBaying in the LAN of CN.
Open-mindedness here opens to open-bodiedness.
After all, there are so many great lovers with fleshes tender and staunch
To be dumped without the sensation of hurt.
Ask not what you can give under the sun; ask what you can take from the underground.
Low expectation is the virtue that founds the kingdom of euphoria.
Look! How beautiful is the flight of birds at dusk before they disappear in different trees. Tonight, I want to be your shameless lover. Call me dear from your heart, through whispers or through moans or you may nod like a silkworm into its cocoon or a flower in the autumn wind.
This is the only name I want. This is the seed with which I can hope to replant the memory of my trust. I can then walk without inferiority complex through the valley of mockery, through the destitute valley of spectacular consumption. I can be affluent for being in want, and I may sound native in the alien air.
Oct. 30-31, 2009
Notes:
The poem starts with variation on Geoffrey Hill's "The Songbook of Sebastian Arrurruz" but goes astray. So the title is changed.
The structure of "is enjoyed" & "is suicided" is a sarcastic neologism invented by contemporary Chinese netizens. They may be understood in such situations: when Gini coefficient is increasing, the government statistics shows that "average" income is increasing, so the poorer becomes in the official report richer(!), and therefore they "are enjoyed" economic progress. The same goes to those who are forced to commit suicide or are found dead as "suicides" (according to police report).
LAN of CN refers to the fact that in China www. is never actually world wide, but the ordinary people can only browse the web with cn address. Therefore, eBay is not eBay in the western users, but only Chinese counterpart like taobao.com. In fact, this website (blogspot)can not be accessed in China, since mid-May, although before that time it could be accessed at times. The bureaucratic logic of practice is like this: When there is a need to shut down some "beyond control" websites, there will be some unofficial notification (without archivable documents of specific instructions), and the net-police in the lower rank will understand what to do. But after the sensitive period of time is over, there will be no one to lift up the curtain, and the net-police dare not or won't bother to turn on the green light. When some foreign complaints may be expected to arise or have already been made (for example, maybe President Obama's visit may be one such occasion), they may show a gesture of "opening." Of course, the ordinary netizens do not need a www., the open-bodiedness of cn is sufficient to "entertain."
"Two ten-year latency period of amnesia" may coincidentally remind one of 1989 Tiananmen Square Incident (the official parlance changes to this now, from the earliest "anti-revolutionary riot), but of course I claim its personal significance.
《虚构诗人的情歌》之变奏一
十年。又一段空白的日子由此结束与开始，
被日常的忙碌覆盖着，人们不亦乐乎，像水草
从食为先到茶舍，中间阳光普照，洒下
迟疑的欲望，一个安分守己的丈夫曾是搁浅的情人，如今心有不甘。
他们并不必要地啜着逐渐转凉的液体，细致地将不时浮起的茶叶
吹开，等待着最后一次续水。
哪有流畅的话能够从心的深处说出，那咳出来的一坨坨
是游人散去后浪漫海滩上的浮渣。
含着中成药丸的嘴，试图吐出一些安慰与轻松的字词。
二
徒然追求那么久了，再没有失去可言；追，如今只是碎步，无穷动的脚趾。
亲爱的，我曾经，仍然，将会，或许永远。那离散的碎，亦是抑扬顿挫的节奏。
犹如尘埃的颗粒渴望聚集，因为有一种驱动力，分子层的。
渴望最终渴望的是渴望自身，而最终却遥遥无期。我，渴望着你，
正是渴望着亲近一种遥远；而我就在自己的远方，等候。这令我不再等候
你，在我不虞的余生。我一生的背后，里程碑都标着你的名字，用不同的缩写。
三
我，一个虚构的诗人，在惟有我一人的国度
处理一种外国文字，而那是我的官方语言。
我的国，我做主。
绿卡只签发一张，
游客签证一旦离境即告失效，
没有多程往返，没有续签，没有重新申请。
你已注定是我的外籍，
但我写的字对任何阐释开放， 容许你最牵强的附会。
四
因为经上写着，感官论属于我，我必回应。
那个女人在另一个不长胡须的男人怀中，必不能达到
我所设定的精神高度。这是举世公认的道理，
输者很容易习惯丧失，时间对弱者的疗效更好。
不能轻易得到的人，本不该得到，
命薄的人生来就该在自嘲中寻求慰藉，还可以
对拥有的欲望详加辨析。或者，起码有些人会这样，
不把丧失当回事儿，也就有了一副低调大师的谱儿。
亲爱的，你尽管沉溺于你那沙文主义的王，
假如偶尔想到我，一定要当作毫不经意，不是怀念，只是想到而已。
虚荣与自尊的结合，那幸福完全靠机缘巧合，谁都无法把握
欲望。只有到了涅槃才能真正割断。
五
昨天是黑夜，我看到你的微笑被门廊中的阳光沁透，
你松散的长卷发挡住了房内那张宽床，我想我经常
在那上面运作我长久的幻想。
你和我，皮肤之间只隔着盐与悲伤。
秋日的峡谷，层林尽染，那上方的蓝一片纯粹，可它还在澄清。
当你关闭了对我敞开的小窗，转向你的王，监视器上留下照片中你鸽眼的温柔，
我，低垂了眼，而阳具高昂，如丰饶之角，我将它撸出最悲伤的汁。
然后我软塌塌地赤裸躺下，贴着我的女人，她的呢喃
被窗外狼嚎般的赤道风暴淹没。
两个十年之前，我的手曾在你的身上
摸出爱情的石头，它们可以做成你最喜爱的项链、发卡或胸针。
六
爱情是一个影子，人人都明白这是一个暗喻，而含混不是它的美。
它来到时就会来到，如云，手指着的时候，已经不是。
多少人在它多变的班车上来往于深夜，丢失了灵魂。
站在黄昏窗前的人便是招引恶灵，
半夜后，他会孤独得找不到可以调情的睡梦精灵。
他只能画一个跳舞的骷髅，将自己交付给描述肉体的文字。
文字的洞穴那么宽敞，他愿意将自己的身体留在那里，
可是没有原生的泪让他将灵魂冲服下去，
而无人认领的尸体暴在阳光下被蠕动的草蚕食，只能存留一天。
他会长成很多蘑菇，小红帽因此不智地给予吞噬她的嘴巴
极不公平的优势。是的，恶终有恶报（谁能不死？），
可最遭痛苦的总是天真的人，因为爱，他们将爱掏出去，交换泪水。
七
要沉入绝大多数人的沉默，沉入多深
才能令自己安全，免于愧疚？
爱自己，要带着多少自我歧视与自知之明，才不是虚妄？
对于从未得到从未忘记的一切，牙关需要咬得多紧，
才能令自己的牙缝只流出洁白而愉快的心情，
在不知的浪峰上起伏如嘻游于水床？
有一个家可以养或被养，有一个人可以爱或被爱，
有一个身体可以用或被用，可谓是个幸运的人。
微不足道的，都对几个人不可或缺，
所有的维持都很巨大。
总有人会在一株无叶的树下等候，
站在那条通往大和谐与小窒息强化王国的黄砖路旁。
健忘症的双十年潜伏期转眼将尽，
从今起，红色旗与烟火的网格可以系统地重写记忆。
由于沙尘暴与雪暴无法预见而又不可避免，他们安装了无数只灭火器。
风是良性的，所以总是温和，每天都有新太阳按时预报进步的指标。
愤怒的青年从流放中陆续归来，回到伟大的摇篮，
睡得太多的猫被距离吸引，自荐枕席，还附带送一点猫粮。
再没有阿塔拉斯为西绪福斯扛着石头，通往天堂的
不是斜坡，而是悬崖，那绝壁上写着无翅生物的七大戒律，
而“除了……”字样的修正条款被缝隙中长出来的枸杞遮蔽。
严峻的崖面之外两个身长之处，六十七根巍峨的柱子紧密排列，防止风蚀，
蜗牛背着它们的房子和无骨的肉身，用口水将自己贴在柱子上，
犹如一只只恋栈的藤壶，死死钉着一条布满苔藓的大船。
在穿越丛林的人生中途，蜗牛父母
因为担心自己将死时言辞可能过于宽容，给儿女们吐露了
只有死者才更透彻的真理：
邻居，只是垫脚石，他们的身体可喂给三只代表性的野兽，用来拖延时间。
统计学比真理还要真实，每一个在泥潭里扑腾的活物
如果没有被自杀就能够被享有社会平均满足度的进步。
生育与性伴侣的基尼指数将被预先存档，这是参照的需要，
对于不结果的生殖活动，没有禁令，这是非产卵动物的基本权利。
自由的体操风险自负，请勿在家里私下模仿。
在大陆，隐私高于大陆法，这绝不仅仅限于虚拟世界。
八
幽暗房间中闪烁的对话框后，每个人都美丽而骁勇，
想象力丰富得总令人难以想象，与时并进的更新版本。
凡人，树立了很高的道德，只是为了无人可以达到，
这留下余地，令我们在大爱中赞叹人的潜能，张口结舌。
爱，使我们每个人都可以是任何别人，不过人肉之下只有一个真身。
要玩动漫真人，只需到中国局域网淘宝。
开放的思想在这儿引领人们进入开放的身体。
说到底，那么多高性能的有情人，或温柔如水或强壮得滴水不漏，
正等待着被抛弃，而且不会有焦灼的感官之痛。
不要问你能在阳光下给予什么，而要问你能从地下取得什么。
抑制期望是一种美德，这是欢欣王国的基石。
看啊，黄昏中的双飞鸟多么美丽，然后它们消失在各自的树林。今夜，我渴望是你最无羞耻的情人。称我是你心底的亲爱，无论低语，还是哀怨，或者你很有涵养地点头，如闭关的蚕或者秋风中的花朵。这是我渴望的惟一的名字。这是我可以期待重新种植记忆的种子。
于是，我可以穿过嘲弄的峡谷，穿过贫瘠中的炫耀消费，而没有一丝自卑。我会因为渴望而富足，在异域的空气中发出乡音。
2009年11月2-3日
