Ma Yongbo: 6 Poems

The Iced Window

“You are real, you are not
the product of your own imagination.”
Snowflakes whisper around my head,
turning my hair whiter still.
I wish it would eventually become transparent,
not this impenetrable, monotonous white.

For many days, I am wondering if I existed,
for many days, everything outside of me seems real.
Snowflakes, like fragments I breathe out, surround me,
like cargo that lingers after a shipwreck,
circling an empty center.

So I write a few words,
like the small and large coins of childhood,
gluing them to the thin ice on the window glass,
then watching them slowly slide down,
finally landing on the hard stone windowsill.
Those tiny clinking sounds
are the only things I can trust.

Revising the Old Translation of John Ashbery’s Poems on Christmas Eve

This will not be the final understanding, despite waves
recurring time and again, after every storm.
Though someone asks you for the key each time
you always hand them more locks.
You can’t live in a museum; you must go out before closing.

Without concentrating the weight of the entire universe
on a needle pointing towards death,
your smile cannot be
peeled off like a label on a willow basket,
leaving a blurry but ever-present residue.

The community of the love of writing only temporarily avoids contingency
its whispers are incomprehensible, but can be felt
as a tremor of a withering disease spreads through wind.
Cold pockets and cold pastorals are mere echo chambers;
the still chaste bride awaits.

This is an opportunity fraught with danger; that outsiders
will occupy the whole house, reverse it to an outline.
Mirrors no longer reflect the self; instead, they layer
others with similar faces deep in the mist of intuition.

You hide the rainbow of words next door
but with a straw, you drain the vitality from this room.
The eternal speed of light that crushes entities
also narrows the gap between past and future,
like a circus horse in a ring of fire;
in the moment of crossing, it solidifies into the present image.

This is still a universe full of hostility,
cold, lonely, isomorphic to its own ruins.
This is still a universe full of chilly promises
because it exists, and I, and the uncertain poetry of you.

Mid-Shot

Poetry is the boundary where strangers meet,
smelling the obscene traces of snails.
They have no form, yet they are not ghosts,
not the mumbling metaphors of the whole night, caressing
the place where an obituary or a prescription was torn out of a newspaper.

The conjoined twins of love poems and elegies govern together,
using poetic uncertainty to resist the tyranny of certainty,
This like that, that like this.
A princess would be better off saying nothing to the frog,
between her thighs, the rust belt, smoke curling.

Measure a country by train, holding a paper mirror,
correcting each other’s ignorance with time.
On the roof of a bungalow, using an abacus,
taking off sheep’s skin gloves inside out.

A thinker, even sitting on the roof, is unseen,
unless he throws tiles, fishhooks, and faded hydrangeas into the crowd.
He chooses stones from the field to take home,
perhaps he should have moved the stones onto the roof sooner,
before the flood of revolution surrounded him.

No matter which road you take, you’ll meet the same people,
they sit in a cart no one drives,
wearing colorful clothes, faces powdered, noisy.
on their way to the next village market, strictly obeying
the stars commands—enough stupor,
enough stones, whether from the roof or the grave.

About This Snow

This snow brings with it a silence
Brings the humming engines, distance, and longing
Piles up whiteness on the double shores of the brain
Soft snowflakes fall from the branches
But I did not see the sinking of the branches
Before the birds take flight
Walls, cars, fallen trees, doors, the hut with a fire
The snow makes the outlines of things swell, connecting
Unrelated things into a peculiar sculpture
Or a monster from a fairy tale
This snow stalls the cars
Makes many people late, idle
Snow slows down the pace of life
Makes the eyes of children on the back of bicycles brighter

The snow fell last night, silently
In the night, I dreamed of my father without hope
Miraculously recovering, but
The plastic implanted in his chest kept growing
I threw myself into his arms excitedly,
Mother smiled approvingly by the side
The snow is the only reliable thing in the world
Like death, eternity, and nothingness
I didn’t think much more. Father died at sixty
In a hot summer. Now I stand in the snow
All I think of are a few simple words
Trees, silence, dirty playing cards on the road
Thinking that this is November
This snow can only stay for a short time.

Seven Short Verses to Tao Qian

Increasing number of dragonflies remind me that it’s already autumn
I’m not as sensitive as before to the change of seasons
maybe old age has passed to my stomach from the drifting wood on the lake
The road turns around the corner, winding into the whistling leaves
With old age comes wisdom: grass remains green without sympathy
The surface of the lake has overflown the roofs, as well as the shaking wires

We have been neighbors for three years, long enough to know
how much wine you can drink. Morning dew is not dry yet
you went up the mountain, turning into a misty cloud
you need the change. You back again when dark fell
with the tinge of rocks and trees, worn-out
could you still read at night after such a long day

Your wish to turn into nothingness is still a chrysanthemum
shrinking into a hard fist in the chilly autumn light
waving at the reality. The flower is in the wine under the eaves
who put it next to the crabs like two similar thoughts
the chrysanthemum became lyric words at your touch
a ray of light pouring into it as if the whole universe was absorbing a coolness

Four seasons correspond with heart, why do you favor
the rainy autumn? Wild geese carried the flowers away
dust settled at the bottom of your cup
Just enough new grain to make new wine
thus someone will come pushing apart the tall grass
Young kids search for fallen chestnuts
not knowing the importance of learning knowledge
let’s drink and remember the busy hours of spring

Pea sprouts on the south mountain grow sparse
dews like little peeled rabbits running here and there
we need to find their cave and dig out the root of autumn
One young rabbit fell to the side of your sickle staying still
Grass growing between your toes
You must work and walk for five miles before rest

Writing poems may not be your best choice,
almost self-entertainment
sometimes you read history or poems from past dynasties
most of the time you watch the reflection playing on the river
while leaving your books open
If we can’t reach what we imagine by writing
who will read them, the okra below the north window grows lush
providing cool air and shade for the house

What mood do we need to sit long in the flowers
in the hot sun and scattering dust, watching the shadow shortened
every sound of wheels brings more dust
everything in the world can make people leave the muse
The distance between hearts is like city to country, getting farther and farther
and closer and closer is the Double Ninth Festival, that lonely mood without wine

Four Types of Hymns

Dark, chilly, and still raining,
The journey is unfamiliar and distant, it seems
He’s been on this road since memory began,
No stars in sight, no knowledge of where it leads,
A damp gleam, a bright rain,
Stables flowing down from two slopes,
Indeed, many stables passed along the way,
All similar, dark, chilly,
Horses munching grass, swaying impatiently

Dark, chilly , and still raining,
The rain doesn’t extinguish the bonfires lit on the coast,
Emitting a pungent smell of burnt, twisted bodies,
Nor does it hold a sword against soft undulating chests,
Outrageous and proud, tangled hair,
His image and accomplishments once conquered
White palaces, all gradually slipping below the horizon,
Rain, coldness, falling on the ship, the sun
Also sinking, along with its realm uninhabited.

Dark, chilly, and still raining,
A bird is chirping, unseen,
A bird is chirping, as if all birds are chirping,
He listens in the darkness, becoming transparent,
He and the bird, merely nature’s ears and throat,
Disease, pleasure forcibly held back,
Lips roaming the air in search of breath,
A tree rises from the heart of darkness, reaching the zenith,
A flock of birds made purely of sound climbs the tiers.

Dark, chilly, and still raining,
A white horse, through the town of low houses,
Slows its pace, behind numerous tightly shut doors
Breathless flames, hearts, snowballs clenched smaller and smaller,
Pencils pause on rough white paper,
Stiff fingers tapping the tabletop halt,
The white horse, snorting under the door crack,
The white horse passes, silently heading towards the ocean,
On the dark cold sea stands a white giant.

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Ma Yongbo was born in 1964, Ph.D,representative of Chinese avant-garde poetry,and a leading scholar in Anglo-American poetry. He has published over eighty original works and translations since 1986 included 7 poetry collections. He focused on translating and teaching Anglo-American poetry and prose including the work of Dickinson, Whitman, Stevens, Pound, Williams and Ashbery. He recently published a complete translation of Moby Dick, which has sold over half a million copies. He teaches at Nanjing University of Science and Technology. The Collected Poems of Ma Yongbo (four volumes, Eastern Publishing Centre, 2024) comprising 1178 poems, celebrate 40 years of writing poetry.