Once, A Pool of Words...
In books, the water between one continent and another is shallow
Moonlight soaks the wrinkles of wavelets, lawns and beaches
I refrain myself from stepping on them, but I look at them
And turn to look at them again, thinking of mailing them to the distant
I can be happy to become a leaf, like a small punt, lying under
The sky far and blue, not knowing where the water runs
But you should not recline on the couch in your big balcony
For who knows what poisonous dust the meteors may drop
I have given up many habits, and still keep some
And I do not spell them out, so you may think about them
And want to share the happiness upon touching the intangible tangibility
There are words that are meant to be read in different time and space only
They are the islands of cloud, when you read yours and I read mine
Sometimes after a dream, sometimes before the darkness shrouds all
Dec. 22, 2009
曾经一片文字
[To --]
书上的大陆与大陆之间，水很浅
月光洇透了细浪、草坪与沙滩
我忍足不去，却看了又看
还转头再看，想着可以寄给远方
其实，我乐于是一片叶子的平底船
不问水的方向，只是仰卧在杳阔的天下
但你可不能倚躺在阳台上
谁知道流星会丢落怎样有毒的尘埃
我戒了很多习惯，还留一些不说出来
也留给你想一想什么叫若有若无的灰色
抚摸到不可触及的实在而渴望分享喜悦
有些字生来就是为了在不同的时空读的
那是云的岛屿，你看你的，我看我的
有时在梦醒后，有时在夜幕蒙住一切之前
2009年12月22日
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
My Poetry Book: Faltering Words
My poetry book:
The book of poems is a selection of poem suites, most of which are written in Chinese only. If I have English versions, they usually come first in English as drafts, then I work in Chinese, and at the same time I may revise the English. But there are differences between the two versions. Especially, when the English one comes first, I become too lazy to work my Chinese.
Imprints:
Copyright © 2009 by Fan Jinghua
All rights reserved.
Title: Faltering Words
Author: Fan Jinghua
Edited and Designed by Jiang Hao
Dickinson Poetry Series, Volume IV.
Published by Dickinson Publishing Co., Los Angeles , USA
ISBN: 978-0-9823459-1-7
Fan Jinghua (1965-)
Chinese Poetry. I. Title. II. Series.
First Edition 2009
*****
Contents
Faltering Words (100 quatrains in four parts)
When Memory Becomes the Past
Kyrie [English version to be posted]
Sonnets (A Sequence)
Affinity [for English]
Far Away (a Suite)
The Art of Master Cool
Childhood [for parts in English see, part1, part2, part3, part4]
Eleven Ways to Name a Killer-Lady [English version]
Follow the Bits of Bread [for English, see part1, part2, part3, part4, part5]
Variations on “The Love Song of a Fictive Poet” [English]
Fan Jinghua: Affinity [for my wife]
Affinity 契合
For Tina 献给婷
* * * *
The bell’s sudden toll
startled the birds, and what followed
scattered them away like sounds.
Lighter colors were being absorbed by the spire.
while you looked for anything everywhere to get connected.
And I did not reach for you.
We would be merged in darkness,
after the echoes.
June 24, 2007
July 27, 2007
记否，那突然的钟响
先是将鸟儿惊起，接着的
将它们如同声音一般撒了出去。
当塔尖将较轻的颜色一抹一抹地吸收，
你环顾四周，寻找任何可以凝目的东西。
而我没有向你伸手。
回响消逝后，黑暗
自会把我们融进一体。
* * * *
You lift the cover of the bamboo steamer,
let the right hand zip into the opening of vapor.
Only you know your forefinger has touched
the delicate dough skin,
like a monkey snatching chestnuts from a fire.
After tapping the juicy dumpling, you pinch your earlobe
and smile, and I can always see in you the girl holding a hot bun,
whose ponytail bouncing as you hopscotch.
You, so cool, will be good at retrieving stars
from the Lethe, while I am in the thin white mist
sailing paper boats from the other side.
June 25, 2007
你左手掀开蒸笼，右手
探进扑面而来的热气，
只有你知道你的食指已经
触试了包子皮的嫩薄；
好像猴子火中取栗。
你仍然会捏着耳垂，微笑，
而我总能看到那个拿着热馒头的小女孩，
那么会跳房子，像那马尾小辫一样。
你将很会在奈何桥头
捞星星，而我就在对岸的
一片薄雾中，朝着你放纸船。
* * * *
When we are old, both of us will be brazen-faced.
I will use my palm to tell you
how for the first time my palm tried to cup your breast
but could not.
And you laugh, saying the hand was so different.
And I laugh too, saying the breast was so different.
Everything about us grows with time and weather,
and we grow with each other.
July 27, 2007
当我们老了，两人的脸都会变厚。
我会用手掌告诉你
我的手掌第一次怎样捂你的乳房
而没捂住。
你笑着说，那时的手很不一样。
我也笑道，那时的乳房很不一样。
有关我们的一切都随着时间改变，
而我们随着对方改变。
* * * *
When autumn inevitably turns into winter,
her body becomes drier,
and his hands are callous and coarse as ever.
She says they are perfect for soothing her back.
He does not scratch with fingertips, but sweeps with his palm.
July 26, 2007
当秋天不可避免地转成冬天，
她的皮肤越来越干燥，
而他手上的老茧一如既往地粗糙。
她说那双粗手挠她的后背最好，
而他不用指尖去抓，而是用手掌轻轻地扫。
* * * *
Words will be used between you and me
less and less, and so will be our doings.
Would we leave more for the young?
I will be conservative, silent about love
and never telling you goodbye,
but grunting about those intimacies of young lovers.
So I do not want to be away from you.
Whatever I say to whomever, I will no longer
glance at you, for you will be listening if you can.
I may not say I love you
just as I will take care of my health not for fear of death
but because I am more familiar with this world and you.
I will not ask what you remember,
and I’d fall into reveries when alone,
and let the past come to visit me.
And I will be friendly with the black guy
who has been following me for so many years.
July 28, 2007
语言，我们越用越少，
就像我们的行动。
我们会多留一些给年少的人么？
我的言行变得保守，再不谈论爱情、
出门时绝口不对你道别；
看到年轻恋人们的亲昵，
我会在喉咙里咕哝。
于是，我开始不愿离你太远。
无论我和谁在一起、无论说什么，我都不再
偷眼瞄着你，因为如果你能听见，你肯定会听。
我将不再说我爱你，
就像我会爱惜身体，不是害怕死亡，
而是有你的世界，我更为熟悉。
我也不会问你记得些什么，
当我独自一人，我便会沉入遐想，
任凭过去随意来访。
我将对那个黑衣人更加友善，
毕竟他从过去到现在已追随我一生。
* * * *
When your hearing dims, I may shout at you
and you will nod and smile.
When all your teeth fall, our kiss
will be soft and full.
When your sight fails, I can hold you
during the day, and you can take it for night;
when I am blind too,
we will not care about time, feeling for each other
and thinking about another life.
July 27, 2007
当你耳背了，我便对你大吼，
而你还会点头微笑。
当你牙齿掉了，我们的亲吻
将会更加柔软而充分。
当你视力衰退，我就总要拥着你，
而你可以将白天当作黑夜；
当我也瞎了，我们便再也不管什么时间，
一直抚摸着对方，心里想着另一生。
* * * *
Beyond two tiny lions with tinier bells, inside the gate,
the old couple sit, by the doors, each
on a bamboo stool, staring at the ground.
They are trying to capture every ant that crawls over the threshold,
and pulverize them between their thumb and forefinger.
One is heard saying:
when I lie dying,
remember to clear ants around my cooling bed.
Do not let me itch when I can no longer move.
In the yard, the sun is fierce
and the phoenix-tree is bonelessly lethargic.
June 27, 2007
两只小石狮挂着旧铃铛，守着身后
敞开的大门，两扇门旁，一对老夫妻
各自坐着一只小竹凳，盯着地面。
他们试图捏起爬进门槛的每一只蚂蚁，
用拇指和食指将它们捻死。
有一个说：
我死的时候，
不能让蚂蚁爬上我的冷铺。
不要让我不能动的时候感到痒痒。
院子里，太阳很辣，
梧桐树没骨头似的懒。
* * * *
Summer’s end. Harvest month.
By the pile, he tires out into snoring.
She unfolds a bale and carefully
spreads the stalks over his body.
Lying two arms away, she stares at the stars,
and the breeze seems still.
Morning breaks. Nothing happens.
She wakes up, finding his coat on her.
The man is reaping.
“Oh, I have overslept,” she says as if to herself,
feeling guiltily happy, like every time
she gets up later than he.
July 24, 2007
夏夜。麦收时节。
他累倒在麦垛下，进入鼾声。
她解开一捆麦子，仔细地
铺在他的身上。
她躺在两臂之外，盯着星星，
明明有夜风，她却感到了静止。
一切都未曾发生，清晨便来临了。
她醒来，发现身上盖着他的褂子。
他已经在割麦。
“啊，我睡过头了”，她宛若自语，
带着内疚的幸福，就像
每次她起得比他迟的时候。
* * * *
All the roads they’ve ever walked together
are ridges and dikes in the fields and unpaved lanes.
For better than half a life, they walk,
one behind the other.
They go to bed one after the other;
only on bed, they lie side by side.
Like the way they die.
June 28, 2007
他们一起走过的路
都是田垄和沟渠、没有铺面的土路。
他们这么走过了大半生，
一前一后。
他们上床也总是一前一后，
只有在床上，他们才并排
躺着。就像他们的死。
* * * *
The refrain will be repeated
for a few times before a song comes to
its end as if there is no end.
Some like the verses for the development,
some the refrain for its easy attunement.
But the melody only runs once and the same,
and although the lyrics may differ,
it follows a common chord progression
or comes with little variation.
Then, a short break of silence follows
like an elongated caesura, and no one knows
what marks the complete dying-away of the previous song.
As the next one begins, it sounds
with pronounced differences,
but the underlying structure varies little.
June 30, 2007
July 27, 2007
副歌，总会重叠几回，
在一首歌结束之前，它使得一首歌
犹如要萦回成一千阕。
有人喜欢听主歌，因为那些词展开一个故事；
有人喜欢副歌，因为便于记忆也易于上口。
虽然填进了不同的词句，曲调却只有一轮，
旋律所依的，仍是通用的和弦行进，至多稍加变奏。
然后，一个短暂的沉默，犹如拉长了的
休止，但无人能确定
前一首歌在何时彻底消音。
下一首歌开始，
一切都显然不同。
但声音下的结构几无差别。
Saturday, December 5, 2009
"I am a sensitive man" and "What are Poets for"
In March 2000, I started reading Al Purdy’s Room for Rent in the Outer Planets. When I finished the first reading, he died. Of course, I did not learn that he was dying when I was reading. Reading starts with rereading, this I believe without doubt, especially in terms of poetry. A few months later, I finished his selected poems, together with two thin critical essays concerning him. As usual, I would put him aside for some time, giving myself a period to ruminate and reflect, till one day when I am brought back to him, say, by reading of anyone who happens to write or talk about him somewhere in my virtual eyeshot or earshot. By the end of 2000, I learned of his death, and the next year I read his Collected Poems.
Purdy had a poem, quite popular among his readers, At the Quinte Hotel, which was made into a video, with himself featuring the voice: “I am drinking/ I am drinking beer yellow flowers/ in underground sunlight/ and you can see I am a sensitive man.” Yes, a man sees what defines himself.
Legend says that the Chinese poet Su Shih (Su Tung-po 1037-1101) once met Zen Master Fo-yin. They talked, and then Su asked Foyin what he was in Foyin’s eyes. Foyin replied “a flower,” while Su retorted that “but I saw you as a pile of shit in this gold kasaya (Buddhist cassock). Upon returning, he told his younger sister Su Xiaomei (fictional younger sister Su) what he and Zen Master had conversed. That gave his sister a good laugh. She told Su that in Buddhism, what one sees in things is the reflection of the beholder (The object mirrors the subject). Su was very ashamed.
Purdy said “I am a sensitive man” and told the bartender, but the bartender was “not quite/ so sensitive as I supposed he was.” Eventually, in the chaotic but lovely bar, Purdy was challenged with a fight, but he tried to dodge, saying “Violence will get nowhere this time… I am a sensitive man/ and would you believe I write poems?” This interested beer-drinkers (not as dramatic as strip-teaser “I” to the peanut-crunching crowd in Plath’s “Lady Lazarus”). Anyway, I was egged on to “tell a poem,” so I read this poem. “They crowed around me with tears/ in their eyes …/ It was heart-warming moment for Literature” and then “I remarked/ ‘—the poem oughta be worth some beer.” Silence froze the tavern. “poems will not really buy beer…/ and I was sad/ for I am a sensitive man.”
Yeats was a sensitive man, and wrote in “When You Are Old” that “but one man loved the pilgrim soul in you” when he could not get the present woman at the present time. He chose to write about this woman being deserted in her senility and murmuring how love fled. He was overpowered by the refusal, and did not venture to pursue any longer. He turned to love and appreciate his own love instead. What he saw in that woman became what defined him, and that became his poetry (the poeticness out of unsatisfaction). The quality that never changed over time in her was not her soul, for that soul did not appease him; it was the thing that he found as a byproduct that had lasting power.
He who loves finds a special charm in another and becomes the charmer through his finding too. He who loves is hurt not because he cannot get what he loves but because his finding is never been appreciated. When whoever he loves is hijacked by another, he is hurt the deepest for the hijacker wastes what he values most. What else could Yeats do but write all his life over what he loved deepest, trying hard to abstract(ize) and mythologize the concrete one?
He had a chance to visit her, in a distant city. Before he actually made the trip, he had some much to brood over. He is a sensitive man. He had started all his premeditations. He would be go with her side by side through the avenues and backstreets and alleys of that ancient city, but how close would they keep their distance so that he can still feel the intimacy? He would sit with her face to face in a café or a teahouse or a small inn for some local odd dishes and delicacies, but how often could he raise his eyes to gaze her eyebrows and forehead? Most of all, what if he feels the static head between what he expected from her and what he perceives from her about their affection? He was phobic of being replied and refused with friendly face-giving appropriate politeness, and he was afraid of being misunderstood by socially conventional wisdom, i.e. a man goes to his old flame for nothing but illusionary “dangerous complement” (not Rousseau’s but Derrida’s). Now, he is a sensitive man, and he chose not to embark on that trip.
Auden wrote in “In Memory of W. B. Yeats”:
You were silly like us; your gift survived it all:
The parish of rich women, physical decay,
Yourself. Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry.
Now Ireland has her madness and her weather still,
For poetry makes nothing happen…
Auden saw Yeats’ futile political endeavors not in those efforts themselves but in Yeats’ belief that he could really make things happen (just like his love poems for a woman). Maybe Auden thought it better not to believe that he could do anything. If one was hurt into poetry, then the poet would be hurt more, for poetry could not provide any external salvation. If a poet demands solace which is external to poetry itself, then poetry may be no shelter for the poet. But,… after all, Auden wrote an elegy for Yeats.
What are poets for in a destitute time? Or what is poetry for in the affluent society in a destitute time? Poetry-writing is not persuasive expository. It is not necessarily performative. A phrase like “I love you” may imply an action, and it is actually a verb, transitive, demanding or entailing an object. If the object can be an objectified into something like an objet d’art, then the object following the verb “love” becomes an absent presence. It is then the mirror that reflects the viewer, and the viewer sees the reflection and forgets the materiality of the mirror. The mirror is the precondition by which the viewer’s self is presented as an image. The poet writes down a word such as “you” in “I love you,” and he proceeds to love this word. The word “you” has its own life and can absorb all the emotions from the poet. A poet is an ouroboros.
A poem is written, not for performative reasons, but for exhibitive values. It is a silent call, by which whoever hears it recognize the quality in her- himself and realizes that s/he shares with a secret fraternity. That mute sound resounds only to those whose invisible heartstrings are struck by the faith that there are sensitive men and women who use such a secret code to convey their call. That call does not make things surface; the things may happen invisibly. The moment Purdy claims for a beer out of the poem, the poem’s value falls zero and dead.
A poem is a monologue of a sensitive man; oh, he may soliloquize before a mirror, but never face an audience, not the least on a stage. Silly, like us. Anne Sexton said she was “a possessed witch” and had been her kind. This is better than Plath's blunt question “are you our sort of a person?” There should be and really is “a special language” that secretly brands them as intimates, so that they can appreciate whatever “tools” the others use but “never ask why.”
Dec. 04, 2009
Purdy had a poem, quite popular among his readers, At the Quinte Hotel, which was made into a video, with himself featuring the voice: “I am drinking/ I am drinking beer yellow flowers/ in underground sunlight/ and you can see I am a sensitive man.” Yes, a man sees what defines himself.
Legend says that the Chinese poet Su Shih (Su Tung-po 1037-1101) once met Zen Master Fo-yin. They talked, and then Su asked Foyin what he was in Foyin’s eyes. Foyin replied “a flower,” while Su retorted that “but I saw you as a pile of shit in this gold kasaya (Buddhist cassock). Upon returning, he told his younger sister Su Xiaomei (fictional younger sister Su) what he and Zen Master had conversed. That gave his sister a good laugh. She told Su that in Buddhism, what one sees in things is the reflection of the beholder (The object mirrors the subject). Su was very ashamed.
Purdy said “I am a sensitive man” and told the bartender, but the bartender was “not quite/ so sensitive as I supposed he was.” Eventually, in the chaotic but lovely bar, Purdy was challenged with a fight, but he tried to dodge, saying “Violence will get nowhere this time… I am a sensitive man/ and would you believe I write poems?” This interested beer-drinkers (not as dramatic as strip-teaser “I” to the peanut-crunching crowd in Plath’s “Lady Lazarus”). Anyway, I was egged on to “tell a poem,” so I read this poem. “They crowed around me with tears/ in their eyes …/ It was heart-warming moment for Literature” and then “I remarked/ ‘—the poem oughta be worth some beer.” Silence froze the tavern. “poems will not really buy beer…/ and I was sad/ for I am a sensitive man.”
Yeats was a sensitive man, and wrote in “When You Are Old” that “but one man loved the pilgrim soul in you” when he could not get the present woman at the present time. He chose to write about this woman being deserted in her senility and murmuring how love fled. He was overpowered by the refusal, and did not venture to pursue any longer. He turned to love and appreciate his own love instead. What he saw in that woman became what defined him, and that became his poetry (the poeticness out of unsatisfaction). The quality that never changed over time in her was not her soul, for that soul did not appease him; it was the thing that he found as a byproduct that had lasting power.
He who loves finds a special charm in another and becomes the charmer through his finding too. He who loves is hurt not because he cannot get what he loves but because his finding is never been appreciated. When whoever he loves is hijacked by another, he is hurt the deepest for the hijacker wastes what he values most. What else could Yeats do but write all his life over what he loved deepest, trying hard to abstract(ize) and mythologize the concrete one?
He had a chance to visit her, in a distant city. Before he actually made the trip, he had some much to brood over. He is a sensitive man. He had started all his premeditations. He would be go with her side by side through the avenues and backstreets and alleys of that ancient city, but how close would they keep their distance so that he can still feel the intimacy? He would sit with her face to face in a café or a teahouse or a small inn for some local odd dishes and delicacies, but how often could he raise his eyes to gaze her eyebrows and forehead? Most of all, what if he feels the static head between what he expected from her and what he perceives from her about their affection? He was phobic of being replied and refused with friendly face-giving appropriate politeness, and he was afraid of being misunderstood by socially conventional wisdom, i.e. a man goes to his old flame for nothing but illusionary “dangerous complement” (not Rousseau’s but Derrida’s). Now, he is a sensitive man, and he chose not to embark on that trip.
Auden wrote in “In Memory of W. B. Yeats”:
You were silly like us; your gift survived it all:
The parish of rich women, physical decay,
Yourself. Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry.
Now Ireland has her madness and her weather still,
For poetry makes nothing happen…
Auden saw Yeats’ futile political endeavors not in those efforts themselves but in Yeats’ belief that he could really make things happen (just like his love poems for a woman). Maybe Auden thought it better not to believe that he could do anything. If one was hurt into poetry, then the poet would be hurt more, for poetry could not provide any external salvation. If a poet demands solace which is external to poetry itself, then poetry may be no shelter for the poet. But,… after all, Auden wrote an elegy for Yeats.
What are poets for in a destitute time? Or what is poetry for in the affluent society in a destitute time? Poetry-writing is not persuasive expository. It is not necessarily performative. A phrase like “I love you” may imply an action, and it is actually a verb, transitive, demanding or entailing an object. If the object can be an objectified into something like an objet d’art, then the object following the verb “love” becomes an absent presence. It is then the mirror that reflects the viewer, and the viewer sees the reflection and forgets the materiality of the mirror. The mirror is the precondition by which the viewer’s self is presented as an image. The poet writes down a word such as “you” in “I love you,” and he proceeds to love this word. The word “you” has its own life and can absorb all the emotions from the poet. A poet is an ouroboros.
A poem is written, not for performative reasons, but for exhibitive values. It is a silent call, by which whoever hears it recognize the quality in her- himself and realizes that s/he shares with a secret fraternity. That mute sound resounds only to those whose invisible heartstrings are struck by the faith that there are sensitive men and women who use such a secret code to convey their call. That call does not make things surface; the things may happen invisibly. The moment Purdy claims for a beer out of the poem, the poem’s value falls zero and dead.
A poem is a monologue of a sensitive man; oh, he may soliloquize before a mirror, but never face an audience, not the least on a stage. Silly, like us. Anne Sexton said she was “a possessed witch” and had been her kind. This is better than Plath's blunt question “are you our sort of a person?” There should be and really is “a special language” that secretly brands them as intimates, so that they can appreciate whatever “tools” the others use but “never ask why.”
Dec. 04, 2009
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