Translation Tuesday: Two Poems by Mingwei Song

November 21, 2023 | in Translations | by Eleanor Goodman

but the heart cannot pretend, it still hurts, it’s still wide awake

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

Translation Tuesday: “Four Poems” by Milo Tse

February 1, 2022 | in Translations | by Eleanor Goodman

hug your father / and the air will solidify

This Translation Tuesday, we feature “Four Poems” by the young, up-and-coming Hong Kong poet Milo Tse, translated from the Cantonese by award-winning translator and author Eleanor Goodman. In these poems, what jumps out to the reader is Tse’s sardonic wit coupled with her insistent repetition that make for a delightful experience when read aloud. Allow yourself to be taken in by Tse’s energetic voice that represents just one of many voices emerging from Hong Kong’s literary scene today.

Four Poems

Welcome into the glorious
windstorm
Of course you weren’t invited
I just happened to begin blowing
blowing across your eyes
blowing across your phone number
blowing across your time to sleep
blowing across your ancestry
blowing across your dignity
blowing across your hands and feet your hair and your
love, if you have any
Then stark naked you enter
the eye of my storm, whereupon
you’re not allowed to leave
In this holy place
I am your patron saint

*

Too many breasts
swaying, and not swaying
too many duties
sweet, and not sweet
too many texts
deleted, and not yet deleted
too many enemies
real, and invented
too many taxis
in service, and not in service
too many monitors
watched, and unwatched
too many plants
that sheep eat, and don’t eat
too many plastic things
biodegradable, and non-biodegradable
too many sins
forgivable, and unforgivable
too many days
to write poems, and not write poems
too much cat hair
from Peas, and from Hands*

*

Your face is concealed
all I can see is your eyes
and body
da da da da
Your feet won’t laugh
but curve slightly inward
da da da da
Your hands don’t cry
but the veins pop out
da da da da
Courage or fear
makes you puff up your chest
da da da da
Indifference or passion
makes your pelvis rigid
da da da da
da da da da
da da da da
da da da da
Who drives us off with a stick like we’re animals
becoming the metronome’s
slave?

*

Hug a man
and a support will rise
hug a woman
and a chatterbox will open
hug a cat
and let a helicopter blow you away
hug a dog
and let a tsunami drown you
hug your father
and the air will solidify
hug your mother
“Are you out of money?”
hug yourself
and be tempted to cry
hug a pillow
goodnight

*Peas and Hands are the poet’s cats

Translated from the Cantonese by Eleanor Goodman

Milo Tse graduated from the University of Hong Kong with a major in Comparative Literature. She has also pursued a Fine Arts degree at RMIT. She shares her body experiences through various forms, including poems, photography and performance. She is neither married, nor desexed yet.

Eleanor Goodman is the author of Nine Dragon Island, and the translator of four books from Chinese. She is a Research Associate at the Harvard University Fairbank Center, and a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. Her translation of poems by Zheng Xiaoqiong will appear this year.

*****

Read more from Translation Tuesdays on the Asymptote blog here:

Contributor:

Eleanor Goodman

Language:

Cantonese

Place:

Hong Kong

Writer:

Milo Tse

Tags:

Hong Kong
Poetry
translation tuesday

Three Poems by Sun Wenbo

December 9, 2013 | in Translations | by Eleanor Goodman

A poet of non-poetic things, Sun Wenbo drops himself into the mine of his subject and then starts tapping on the walls around him to find a way to tunnel out. This is the tension that undergirds his work, whether the poet’s intellect will manage to make its way back to the surface. His lines are sinewy but vernacular, sometimes verging on chatty, with moments of startling grace. He has read and absorbed the greats of Chinese literary history, and he writes as much to Du Fu as to his contemporaneous readers. His oeuvre as a whole presents a poet passionately concerned with words above all, but also with history and politics, the metaphysical and social realms, philosophy, love and its failures. When judging their peers, Chinese writers tend to be concerned not only with a poet’s output, but with his or her attitude toward the work of poetry. Sun Wenbo ranks among the most focused and intent. He has a scholar’s force of concentration and a soldier’s determination.