hearts shouldn’t try to be flowers
that just keep opening up
for every inch of longing
they make an inch of ashes.
translated by David Young
poetry
Dreams by Ai Qing
Waking hours
Are crammed with fantasy
Then dreams
Drop in to visit while you sleep
Perhaps an early childhood sweetheart
Or an old buddy arriving from far away
Grief writhes on an inner-spring mattress
Ecstatic rendezvous occur on a heap of straw
While poverty-stricken you receive gifts
When you’re affluent you get robbed
It could be a false alarm
Or the inkling that more is amiss.
treanslated by Fang Dai, Dennis Ding, & Edward Morin
One Generation by Gu Cheng
Dark nights endowed me with eyes for darkness
Yet with them I seek light
translated by Fang Dai, Dennis Ding, & Edward Morin
note: Written in response to the Cutural Revolution but yet it seems appropriate for these times, too.
from Saddle and Cell by The Three Marias: Maria Isabel Barreno, Maria Teresa Horta, & Maria Velbo da Costa
To love another truly
be that person wedge or hollow
a fine rider or a cloistered house (a womb)
is to keep that beloved’s other face
clasped in your hands
translated by Helen R. Lane
San Onofre, California by Carolyn Forche
We have come far south.
Beyond here, the oldest women
shelling limas into black shawls.
Portillo scratching his name
on the walls, the slender ribbons
of piss, children patting the mud.
If we go on, we might stop
in the street in the very place
where someone disappeared
and the words Come with us! we might
hear them. If that happened, we would
lead our lives with our hands
tied together. That is why we feel
it is enough to listen
to the wind jostling lemons,
to dogs ticking across the terraces,
knowing that while birds and warmer weather
are forever moving north,
the cries of those who vanish
might take years to get here.
A Love Song by Else Lasker-Schüler
Come to me in the night—we shall sleep closely together.
I am so tired, lonely from being awake.
A strange bird already sang in the dark early morning,
As my dream still wrestled with itself and me.
Flowers open before all the springs
Taking on the color of your eyes. . .
Come to me in the night on seven-starred shoes
And love shall be wrapped up until late in my tent.
Moons rise from the dusty trunk of heaven.
We shall make love quietly like two rare animals
In the high reeds behind this world.
translated by Michael Gillespie
End of the World by Else Lasker-Schüler
There is a crying in the world,
As if the good Lord had died,
And the lead shadow, which falls down,
Suffers gravely.
Come, let us hide nearer each other. . .
Life lies in every heart
As in coffins.
You! let us kiss deeply—
A longing throb against the planet
On which we must die.
translated by Willis Barnstone & Michael Gillespie
poem by Frau Ava
I am yours,
you are mine.
Of this we are certain.
You are lodged
in my heart,
the small key
is lost.
You must stay there
forever.
translated by Willis Barnstone
from Clear Bright by Li Ch’ing-chao
My friend, while you’re alive
And have wine, use it to get drunk.
There’ll be no second helpings
When you get to the Nine Springs.
translated by Kenneth Rexroth
Dusk by Gabriela Mistral
I feel my heart melting
in the mildness like candles:
my veins are slow oil
and not wine,
and I feel my life fleeing
hushed and gentle like the gazelle.
translated by David Garrison
Leonard Durso 