Five Poems by Nianxi Chen Translated by Kuo Zhang & Melisa Cahnmann-Taylor

父亲晚景

我从新疆回来那一天
他正在一棵老桃树下种菜
在给白菜垫底肥的时候
他也给桃树上了肥料
这使桃树在四年后他离开时
依然结出了硕果
 
邻居家盖新婚的房子
使用了铝合金窗
那冰冷的窗框引得他一阵阵痛苦
他执意要给人家打一副木格柴窗
他说柴窗才配得上喜气
怕人不信        他用木工铅笔画了带鸳鸯的图纸
这个过程里    铅笔几次变成锋利的斧子
 
他突然扭过头来
怔怔地看着我
目光简单得没有一丝内容
四十七年前的某夜
也有一双眼睛这样看着我
这最后的一刻                        他看到的一定也是这样：
人间梨花开了
远处    漫漫无涯的黄沙

Father’s Declining Years
 
The day I came back from Xinjiang,
he was growing vegetables under an old peach tree.
When composting the base for napa cabbage,
he also fertilized the tree.
So four years later when he passed away,
it still bears great fruit.
 
When neighbors built a newlywed couple’s house
they used aluminum for frames.
The icy metal caused father a lot of pain.
He insisted on making wooden lattice windows.
He said only wood can delimit happiness.
Afraid they wouldn't believe him       he used 
a woodworking pencil to draw a blueprint with Yuanyang 
during which, many times,                 the pencil turned into a sharp ax.
 
That last visit he'd suddenly turned his head 
staring at me.
The eyes so simple, without content.
One night forty-seven years ago,
a pair of eyes had also looked at me like this.
In his last moment      what he’d seen must've been like this, too:
the pear blossoms,
yet, in the distance      the endless yellow sand.
 

马

马一辈子跑过多少路
马自己也不清楚
马驮着我们
快马加鞭地去办一些事情
事情总是比马毛还多
有些事比马还快
马撒开蹄子也追不上
 
马一辈子沉默寡言
却听得懂人的事情
某个人死了
它会喊一嗓子
眼睛里都是人的风尘旧影
马把车子拉坏一辆又一辆
把黄尘分开又合拢
走完了一条路又走另一条
 
有一年                        一匹马死了
我们就在马圈旁架起铁锅
煮马的骨头
我们喝着酒    啃马的肉
好多马围着我们看
他们不发一声
马一定看清了我们
而我们对马什么也没看见

Horse
 
How many roads can a horse travel in a lifetime?
The horse doesn’t know. 
He just carries us 
to accomplish our tasks with speed.
There’s always more hairs on a horse,
always something faster, too.
Even if he splits his stride, a horse may never catch up. 
 
The horse lives his life in silence,
but understands the human essence. 
When someone dies,
it’ll whinny in grief,
eyes full of an old owner’s shadows. 
Pulling one old wagon after another,
through plumes of yellow dust,
the horse completes one road after another.
 
One year         a horse died.
We set up an iron pot next to the stables,
boiled its bones.
We drank wine,           ate the meat.
Many horses were watching.
They didn’t say a word. 
They must have seen right through us,
but we didn’t see anything about the horses. 

永别的父亲

对于我来说
它已仅仅是一个名词
由词典回归词典
由来处回到最后的来处
我已很少用到它了
 
前天    在填写一份表格时
在亲属一栏我久久踌躇
这是一个父亲面对脐带连体的婴儿的踌躇
这是小学生面对第一个生字的踌躇
这是开山的人第一次面对三吨炸药起爆的踌躇
 
每天晚上出去散步
我总是习惯把这半生走过的路再走一段
在平坦的望江公园翻山越岭
每次经过一棵年轻的银杏树时
总是突然踌躇
——在你的坟前
荒草掩映中    一棵年轻的银杏
 
那是二十年前你无意栽下的
浓密叶片的深处        我看见过
一颗    深秋里唯一的
黄澄澄的果实
 

I Shall Never Meet You Again, Father 
 
For me,
father is just a noun,
found dictionary to dictionary,
origin from final origin. 
I rarely use it anymore. 
 
The day before yesterday       when filling out a form,
I hesitated for a long time at the column for relatives.
It’s a father’s hesitation to cut his baby’s umbilical cord. 
It’s a primary school student’s hesitation when facing the first printed word.
It’s the hesitation of a man who sets three tons of explosives at his first mountain. 
 
When every evening I go for a walk 
I always take the same road I’ve walked half my life,
trampling over mountains through the flatlands of Wangjiang Park.
Each time I pass the young ginkgo tree
I hesitate.
—At your grave
a young ginkgo tree                shades in wild grass. 
 
Twenty years ago you didn’t mean to plant that tree.
In the depths of impenetrable leaves  I’ve seen
one,     only one yellow fruit
in late autumn. 
 

记得那年的荷塘

记得那年的荷塘在村西
记得那个夏天                        整个塘池
盛满了蛙声    它们一声一声
有时候叫我    有时候叫你
那时候我们都还年少                        快乐
没有现在这样不同
 
在池水边我看见了一朵莲
要开未开        透着一点红    多年之后
我才知道了一个人    那时正值莲开
多年之后        从一本线装书里
才知道它叫菡萏
 
如今    村西布满了荒草
池塘填满了陈事和新物
命运被风吹远了        只记得回村时
替你背包        一朵菡萏在里面
悄悄地开了

I Remember the Lotus Pond That Year
 
I remember that year the lotus pond was in the west of the village. 
I remember that summer’s      whole pond
filled with frogs          trilling and chirping. 
Sometimes they called me.     Sometimes they called you. 
We were both young               and happy,
not so different as we are now. 
 
I saw a lotus by the pond:
unopened,       a crimson bud.            Many years later,
I realized how in full bloom you were then;
years later,       from a thread-bound book,
I learned the red lotus was called, handan. 
 
Now    what’s west of the village is full of weeds. 
The pond’s filled with old and new things. 
Destiny’s pummeled by the wind.                  But I remember once, returning to the village,
I carried a backpack for you               where, inside, a handan lotus 
quietly bloomed. 
 
 
 
 
 

牵牛花开了

今天早晨        在去温榆河的路边
一些牵牛花开了
这些又被称作狗耳草黑白丑的花儿
开了一路
 
想起有一年
从西宁到郎木寺
公路两边也开满了它们
一簇一簇        沿循化                        过双城
像执意赶赴神的约会
 
我猜想                        植物的心里是有神的
它们怀里都有一卷羊皮经
而我们早已没有
只剩一部血泪仇
 
从温榆河回来时
我看见这些又叫小儿羞的花儿
都俯下了身子
像旺吉终于到达了经筒
安详而空无

Morning Glories Are Blooming
 
This morning              on the way to Wenyu River
morning glories are blooming.
Also called dog ear grass, black and white bull flowers
flourish all the way.
 
One year,
from Xining to Langmusi
both sides of the road were full of them.
One cluster after another        along Xunhua             across Shuangcheng
like insisting on a date with God.
 
I guess             there’s a god in the heart of the plant.
They each have sheepskin scrolls in their arms.
And we don't, 
only blood and tears left.
 
When returning from Wenyu River,
I see these flowers called shy boys
all bent down
like a Tibetan who'd finally reached the prayer wheel,
peaceful and empty.

Melisa Cahnmann-Taylor, Meigs Professor of Language and Literacy Education at the University of Georgia, is the coauthor of The Creative Ethnographer’s Notebook (2024), the poetry book, Imperfect Tense (2016) and five other books on the arts of language and education. Recipient of six NEA Big Read Grants, a 2023 NEA Distinguished Fellowship, Hambidge Residency Award, and the Beckman award for Professors Who Inspire, she was appointed in 2020 as Fulbright Scholar Ambassador. Her poems, translations, and essays have appeared in Georgia Review, Bitter Southerner, Lilith, American Poetry Review, Poet Lore, Barrow Street, Mom Egg, Plume, Tupelo, Rattle, Hawaii Pacific Review and elsewhere.  She and Kuo Zhang are the exclusive translators for Nianxi Chen, China’s labor poet laureate.  

Kuo Zhang is an Assistant Professor in Education at Siena College and received her PhD in TESOL & World Language Education at the University of Georgia. Her poem, “One Child Policy” was awarded second place in the 2012 Society for Humanistic Anthropology (SHA) Poetry Competition held by the American Anthropological Association. Her poems have appeared in The Roadrunner Review, Lily Poetry Review, Bone Bouquet, K’in, DoveTales, North Dakota Quarterly, Literary Mama, Mom Egg Review, Adanna Literary Journal, Raising Mothers, MUTHA Magazine, Journal of Language and Literacy Education, and Anthropology and Humanism.    

Nianxi Chen, born 1970 in Northern China, began writing poems in 1990. In 1999, he left his hometown and labored as a miner for 16 years. In 2015, he couldn’t continue work due to occupational disease. In 2016, he was awarded the Laureate Worker Poet Prize. His rise to fame as a “migrant worker poet” was featured in a 2021 New York Times Article. Chen’s poetry book, Records of Explosion provides lyrical documentation of the hidden costs behind China’s financial boom. Chen’s poems in translation have appeared in Tupelo, Rattle, Plume, Versopolis, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Southern Humanities Review, Poetry Northwest, Quarterly West, Terrain and Itinerant.  

16 July 2025