I Saw Darkness I Never Saw a Crow
Crows dancing to a cheery tune
they share the corpse of a big rat
they chatter while carrying dark clouds’ coffins
they speak ill of the sky while flying
the crippled crows are pacing the balcony of a palace
they peck other crows on the crown
they write to the abyss
their handwriting is so neat as if they were soaring
they eat up darkness while not pursuing any light
they are dressed in suits and sit in a meeting room of the court
when the rear-end of the daylight comes uncovered
the crows shield its exposed skin with their darkness
the world is producing dark matter through politics violence and love
through the Mafia crouching down in a square in Sicily
through one poem after another
the rabble is eulogizing crows
the world is never darker than the crows
God does not dare disclose their conspiracy
the nightcrawler of the daylight
I saw darkness I never saw a crow—
the perfection of darkness
I Have Lost that Sadness
The spring has no festival no wizard
no whiteness is there to baptize anybody or to welcome the brides
no they were here they were here before
in the park where we played last February
a mysterious snowman a flower petal committing suicide
footprints belonging to a neighbor ruins vanishing into thin air
yet I can’t quite see
the spring breeze suddenly arriving overnight while pear flowers bloom
I have lost that language and that old sadness
the darkness is not spread out across the land
Time Flies
Laboratories are crying in February
when the flowers of sadness bloom in ambulances
this death is too shameful bossy and arbitrary
spring is humming corny songs all day long while selling out the world
living for death living for death
without knowing about the living how to think about the dead
everyone dies there’s no need to rush
death is a private matter
I need to freshen up
to smoke a cigarette down the hall
to delete the mean messages in my phone
to write a letter to the leaves of fall
to bring up my father’s illness
to read through the Dream of the Red Chamber
to visit the Cherry Garden
to have a cup of tea while praying the rosary and waiting for the takeout delivery guy
he was once a potato farmer
a cloud is passing away no need for comfort nor memorial
its death is so opalescent calm and tranquil
yet it does not want to die at this very moment
the refrigerator full of statistics the hypocritical funeral home
no running water no muddy soil
no pine tree no vulture singing on stones
someone who does not want to wear a mask will die of
an order fear pretense panic ugliness
Three Poems on the Pandemic
Yu Jian
translated from the Chinese by Shuyu Guo
Read the original in Chinese, Simplified
Listen to the original read by the poet:
Chinese characters often contain much more information than English letters. As a translator, it can be difficult to maintain the compact syntax of the source text. For instance, in Yu Jian’s poem “I Have Lost that Sadness,” a line reads “the spring breeze suddenly arriving overnight while pear flowers bloom.” This longer line consists of two shorter lines translated from the source language. Combining the syntactical content from two lines of the Chinese text into one single English line results in my being able to condense the linear form of the English-language translation, thereby better matching the structural compactness of content present in the Chinese.
Yu Jian always avoids punctuation in his composition, assimilating the patterns of classical Chinese poetry to his own poetry. Doing so leaves more room for readers to decide how to read. Syntactically, the poems are composed of fluctuating line lengths, balancing long and short lines that result in poetic free verse. Medieval Chinese poets traditionally combined this technique with strict poetic meter. However, poetic meter is often absent in a contemporary Chinese poem. Yu Jian’s use of fluctuating line lengths is modified according to the characteristic of vernacular language. In the poem “Time Flies,” for example, the poet writes, “I need to freshen up / to smoke a cigarette down the hall / to delete the mean messages in my phone.” In the source language text, strict poetic meter is unseen, and the length of these lines fluctuates. In my translation, I have preserved the fluctuation of line length to produce free verse.
Much of Yu Jian’s wok focuses on socio-political issues, and in this series, he demonstrates a strong interest in death and illness. In the poem “Time Flies,” the metaphors such as the crying laboratories in February, the ambulances of sadness, and the hypocritical funeral home all contribute to the overarching “death” motif. They echo some of the more uneasy subjects of the pandemic. Like the cloud, for instance, that is passing away, but does not want to die just yet. Or when Jian writes, “someone who does not want to wear a mask will die of an order fear pretense panic ugliness.” The person in question may very well be any one of us.
Yu Jian always avoids punctuation in his composition, assimilating the patterns of classical Chinese poetry to his own poetry. Doing so leaves more room for readers to decide how to read. Syntactically, the poems are composed of fluctuating line lengths, balancing long and short lines that result in poetic free verse. Medieval Chinese poets traditionally combined this technique with strict poetic meter. However, poetic meter is often absent in a contemporary Chinese poem. Yu Jian’s use of fluctuating line lengths is modified according to the characteristic of vernacular language. In the poem “Time Flies,” for example, the poet writes, “I need to freshen up / to smoke a cigarette down the hall / to delete the mean messages in my phone.” In the source language text, strict poetic meter is unseen, and the length of these lines fluctuates. In my translation, I have preserved the fluctuation of line length to produce free verse.
Much of Yu Jian’s wok focuses on socio-political issues, and in this series, he demonstrates a strong interest in death and illness. In the poem “Time Flies,” the metaphors such as the crying laboratories in February, the ambulances of sadness, and the hypocritical funeral home all contribute to the overarching “death” motif. They echo some of the more uneasy subjects of the pandemic. Like the cloud, for instance, that is passing away, but does not want to die just yet. Or when Jian writes, “someone who does not want to wear a mask will die of an order fear pretense panic ugliness.” The person in question may very well be any one of us.
Yu Jian (1954–) is widely recognized as one of the most important Chinese poets of our time. He has published numerous books of poetry, and his work has been translated into fourteen languages. His poetry collection, Flash Cards: Selected Poems from Yu Jian’s Anthology of Notes, was published by Zephyr Press in 2010. Yu Jian’s poems have appeared in English-language literary magazines such as Words Without Borders, Paper Republic: Chinese Literature Matters, and The Believer. In addition to being an accomplished poet, he is also a filmmaker and photographer; among his documentary films are Jade Green Station (2003) and Hometown (2009). Yu Jian is a professor of Chinese language and literature at Yunnan University, and lives in Kunming, China.
Shuyu Guo is currently translating a selection of Yu Jian’s poetry. A Ph.D. student in University of Connecticut’s Comparative Literature & Cultural Studies program, Shuyu obtained her M.A. degree in Comparative Literature from Indiana University Bloomington. Her research is oriented around the subject of trauma, with a focus on its manifestations in modern Chinese poetry.
