Margins — Web Exclusive
By Zhai Yongming
Translated by Andrea Lingenfelter
Six o'clock in the evening, the setting sun blazes
Between your pairs of legs
Staring into the turbid eyes of a madman
You might resist, but I've tasted to the full
The wind's loud tears, and a grain of sand isn't much to look at
Its gaze fixed on the two of you, it would like to say
The birds are flying in the same circles they did some other time
You've already walked to the margins of the stars
You both understand silence
The strangeness of two names recognizes autumn
You two hide your footsteps, denying me
Any peace, while bats smile in the sky
Speaking a language not at all human
You couldn't possibly make a prettier picture
Than you do tonight, with your head
Resting on his leg, the way
Water rests on its stones
Right now the two of you are thinking how the most dismally lonely moments
Can be transformed into grapes, turning translucent on time
Falling to pieces/disintegrating in their time
The blind pool wants to see right through the night, the moon just like
A cat's eye, and I'm neither happy nor sad
Leaning against a dead fence and staring at you both
I want to tell you No one's going to hold back the black night
Darkness has already entered these margins
(1984, revised 1994)
Zhai Yongming is a Chinese poet from Chengdu. After being sent away for two years during the Cultural Revolution to do manual labor in the countryside she returned to Chengdu. In 1981 she began to publish her poems. Her poem cycles include "Women," "Jing'an Village," "Life in This World," and "The Designs of Death." Her poetry collections include Women, Above All the Roses, Collected Poems of Zhai Yongming and Plain Songs in the Dark Night. She has been invited to international conferences and poetry festivals in several countries in Europe and lived in the United States from 1990 to 1992.
Andrea Lingenfelter is a poet, scholar, and translator of diverse works from Chinese to English. Her published translations include the novels Farewell My Concubine by Lilian Lee and Candy by Mian Mian . She has also published translations of poems by a number of contemporary authors in mainland China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong in anthologies and journals. Her translations have appeared in Kyoto Journal, The Literary Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Foreign Policy. She also composed the subtitles for Chen Kaige’s 2006 film, Temptress Moon. She is currently completing a book-length collection of poems by China’s foremost feminist poet, Zhai Yongming, titled The Changing Room.