This Translation Tuesday, we flit between sleepless dreams in Mingwei Song’s immersive poetry. Hypnotized by incantations, we are firmly inside while the outside is ever-evolving; night falls and seasons pass. Translated from the Chinese by Eleanor Goodman, Angel and Bearing in Mind are an entrancing study of repetition and change.
Angel
Waking from a dream, I dimly recall you, like a broken-winged angel
carefully hiding yourself in the crowd, like a spot of cardamom red in a black and white movie and in the blink of an eye the entire sky dances with snow, the dream smashes into symbols
like melting ice, flowing into the morning’s sorrow
waking each day again and again
as star after star goes extinct
I can only get up, walk into the origami of ordinary life
turn carefully so as not to bump into the walls covered in incantations
in one vast white day
my body is shadowless
with nowhere to hide the worries of dreams
the daylight holds no warmth
yet is everywhere
the endless day is as hard to traverse as an enormous empire
there is blank white paper everywhere before my eyes
yet I cannot write down your name
