Wall

Sun Dong


Geographic change is too slow
a species goes extinct too slowly          the years roll on
everything is the opposite of the poetic
the carrot top is a little conspirator          Brodsky also drank gutter oil
that guard Micaiah can only say drily
you can cough when you're at home
crime usually occurs in the train station of the heavenly realm or in
Notre Dame de Paris          who can expect
a black rider darker than the black horse          towering
outside the wall          outside the foam of thick language
probing
some corner of the wall
excavating the interpreters          they say
speaking without reserve means you can speak forever
minding your own business is a virtue
looking, listening, asking, feeling are methodology          after that
digging out the earthworms cockroaches and flies          they say
to make the whole world harmonious is dirty work
fastidious people always have some unfastidious aspects
and in the end, what was dug out are ordinary bones
although you are outstanding men and women          or
beautiful barbels and big-eyed shelducks          none of it is worth a penny
in fact there is only one powerful thing
the symptoms of sclerosis
it would shake things up too much if everybody and his dog became immortal
who can hear the sound of the chamber bursting and of whispering and burning and fright
outside the world's bandwidth


translated from the Chinese by Josh Stenberg

Read the original in Chinese, Simplified

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Sun Dong (b. 1969) is a poet and professor of foreign languages at Nanjing University of Finance and Economics. Originally from the northeast of China, she studied at the Qiqihar Normal University, Heilongjiang University, and Nanjing University. In 2003 she was a visiting researcher at the University of Waterloo. She did her postdoctorate at McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada. Her first collection of poetry Cruel Crow, co-authored with Feng Dong, was published in 2011.

Josh Stenberg is a Vancouver-born, Asia-based poet and writer. His fiction and poetry have appeared or are forthcoming in Asia Literary Review, Vancouver Review, FreeFall, Kartika Review, Assaracus, and The Antigonish Review. He is the translator of two volumes of Chinese short fiction as well as the editor of Irina's Hat: New Short Stories from China.