Monday, November 30, 2009

Li Yiliang: Age

  Age
   (To “Little Fish”)
         by Li Yiliang  tr. Fan Jinghua
It is at this age
Poets write you one poem after another
And you do not know sneer yet

The day you’ve learn how to sneer
You will be old
Be you twenty or sixty
      Nov. 17, 2009


  年龄
   ——给小小鱼
         李以亮 

是这样的年龄
诗人们纷纷给你献诗
而你还不会耻笑

等到学会耻笑的时候
小小鱼,你就老了
无论二十岁还是六十岁
    2009/11/17

  Let’s suppose this “Little Fish” is the speaker’s teenage daughter, at an age when so called poets would write poems to please her and please themselves. Let’s suppose that “Little Fish” is someone even poets may degrade themselves by pleasing her and degrading poetry. Does or will “Little Fish” learn that poetry is not to please one person, especially not by so many poets who write one poem after another for one person even that person is herself. Yes, when she learns this, she will be too wise to be fooled by that kind of “sneerable” poets. How about the poet who write this poem for “Little Fish”? I love reading this poet, Li Yiliang, from the central provincial capital Wuhan on the mid-stream of the Yangtze River.

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