Three Poems by Yan An

translated by Chen Du and Xisheng Chen
an excerpt from Yan An’s latest book A Naturalist’s Manor published by China Youth Publishing Group

Writing Lyrics for a Rocker at a Subway Passage

This spring loves the seemingly rotten loneliness
The heavy snow resembles invertedly grown thorns in the sky
With six varieties of lascivious blades on their hexagonal vertices
Falling like sharp nails
In this remote desolate northern area
The man trekking in this strange land with a heavy backpack
Is like a piece of timber from an anonymous tree
Hewed and whittled many times……..and carved unevenly
With his gloomy forehead
And brilliant facial expression

This trekker exhaling hot air from his mouth
With eyes as sharp as fireballs
Witnesses how a gale destroys a train
Blows away the tents and hitching posts in the wild
And chaps the faces of the pedestrians
The gale has whirled away and scattered loosely
A green train and its shattered glass on a foreign land
They obstruct the road with dead-looking half-open ghost eyes
The road you are going to pass

In this blustery spring……..a snow squall is susurrating
The damp and rotten loneliness……..like the snow in the shadow
Is growing furtively like cockroaches

拟地铁过道摇滚歌手唱词

这春天喜欢腐烂一样的寂寞
这大雪像天空倒长着的尖刺
落钉子一样落着
它那六个角上六种淫荡的刀锋
这荒凉的北方遥远而空旷
这背负重重行囊在异乡远行的人
像来自无名树的木头
历经刀砍斧剁 粗细不一的雕刻
额头阴暗
表情明亮

这嘴里呵着热气远行的人
这眼睛像火球一样犀利的人
眼看着大风吹坏了火车
吹散了野地上的露天帐篷和拴马桩
也吹坏了行人的脸庞
大风把绿皮火车和它的碎玻璃
拉拉撒撒地扔在异乡
横在你将要经过的
像死亡一样半睁着鬼眼的路上

这刮大风的春天 大雪在沙沙地落着
潮湿而腐烂的寂寞 像暗地里的雪
像蟑螂一样在暗暗生长

A Man’s Knife Glint, Moonlight and Starshine

This is a man with a shadow and height only measurable by a tall wall
His plain yet dangerous mind is higher than tree canopies and clouds
Hanging in the sky flown through by kites and planes
Someone saw him in the woods under the moonlight
Practicing alone a body-shrinking technique like catching fish in a tree
As a member of the municipal rescue squad
With the talent of clambering up an edifice and breaking its skylight like a spider
He cuts glass as precisely and efficiently as incising the skin
Once he washed absolutely clean some people who died a sudden death in glass
And displayed them on the other shore no one can reach
No one can closely observe his
Countenance more blurred than starlight
And his silhouette that sporadically shows up on the unreachable other shore
With some dispiritedness freed by him as well as some frustration

This is a man who circumvents the sidewalks and narrow lanes
To saunter alone in the moorland
He tirelessly sweeps with wild grass and branches
The knife glints unleashed by his gloomy countenance
That look like the shines faded out ever after someone gets knifed to death

He will rehabilitate himself into another person
One who can return to the life on this shore
While being unnoticeable to anyone

一个男人的刀光、月光和星光

那是一个影子和个子都要用高墙衡量的男人
他简朴而凶险的心高过树冠和云彩
悬挂在飞过风筝和飞机的天上
有人看见他曾在月光下的树林里
缘木求鱼似地独自修炼缩身术
作为一名城市救护队队员
他有蜘蛛一样攀援大厦打破天窗的本领
切割玻璃像切割皮肤一样干净利落
他曾把一些在玻璃中猝死的人洗得干干净净
陈列在众人到达不了的对岸
没有人能在近处观察他
比星光更加迷离的脸色
和他偶尔只出现在遥不可及的对岸
有些任其颓败也有些怅然的身影

那是一个绕过边道和窄巷
径自去旷野独自溜达的人
用野草和树枝不停地扫着
自己阴郁的表情所闪烁着的
仿佛杀人后从此歇息下来的刀光

他要把自己修复成另外一个人
一个可以回到此岸的生活中
而不被谁觉察的人

Moorland Is My Friend

The man with a very big forehead gleaming with light
Is far and deep-sighted……..directly contained in the depths of his vision
Is the light of objects
He has come down from the highland at the end of the moors
From some yonder place more recondite than the moorland
I’ve only met him occasionally on the street
As soon as I see his broad bright countenance
Looking like that he can hold many moorlands in his heart
I flip palpating with excitement……..engrave him in my mind
Ever since then I have too become obsessed with
Interacting with the wilderness
Now with the lapse of time
The moorland has become a friend of mine
Even those wild flowery clouds having scurried in the moors
For so long as to have strayed inadvertently
Have become my friends
A fluttering black butterfly……..dumped by its girlfriend
Its gigantic beauty and frustration
As well as its solo flight colliding with the entire moorland
Are also my friends

I have been deeply infatuated with the moors
My shadow and I
Including those I have come across only once and then will never forget
Who once showed up in the moorland and then disappeared from there
They and their shadows
Are all kept in my mind like the relatives I keep thinking about
We are all part of the moorland

旷野是我的朋友

额头很大闪着亮光的人
眼光深远 在眼光深处
直接包含事物之光的人
从旷野尽头的高地上下来
从比旷野更深邃的远方某地到来
我和他只是在街道上偶尔见过
一看他明亮而宽阔的表情
心里放得下很多旷野的样子
我便怦然心动 从此记住了他
从此我也喜欢上了
和旷野打交道
久而久之到了现在
旷野已成为我的朋友
包括在旷野上奔跑时间太久
不慎迷路的那些野性的云朵
也是我的朋友
飞翔的黑蝴蝶 被女朋友甩了以后
它的硕大的美丽和失落
以及冲撞整座旷野的独飞
也是我的朋友

我深深地迷恋上了旷野
我和我的影子
包括那些偶尔一见再不相忘
曾在旷野上出现又在旷野上消失的人
他们和他们的影子
让我像惦念亲人一样念念不忘
我们都是旷野的一部分

Yan An is one of the most famous poets in contemporary China, author of fourteen full-length poetry collections including his most famous poetry collection Rock Arrangement which has won him The Sixth Lu Xun Literary Prize, one of China’s top four literary prizes. He is the winner of various national awards and prizes. He is also the Vice President of Shaanxi Writers Association, the head and Executive Editor-in-Chief of the literary journal Yan River, one of the oldest and most famous literary journals in Northwestern China. In addition, he is a national committee member of the Poetry Committee of China Writers Association.

Chen Du is a Voting Member of American Translators Association and a member of the Translators Association of China with a Master’s Degree in Biophysics from Roswell Park Cancer Institute, the State University of New York at Buffalo and a Master’s Degree in Radio Physics from the Chinese Academy of Sciences. She revised more than eight chapters of the Chinese translation of the biography of Helen Snow, Helen Foster Snow – An American Woman in Revolutionary China. In the United States, her translations have appeared or are forthcoming in Columbia Journal, Lunch Ticket, Pilgrimage, Sinking Water Review, Anomaly, The Bare Life Review, and River River, her essay was published by The Dead Mule and Hamline University English Department, her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Levitate, Hamline University English Department, Nebo: A Literary Journal, and American Writers Review, and her poetry chapbook was published by The Dead Mule online. Three poems co-translated by her and Xisheng Chen are a finalist in The Gabo Prize for Literature in Translation & Multilingual Texts. She is also the author of the book Successful Personal Statements. Find her online at ofsea.com.

Xisheng Chen, a Chinese American, is an ESL grammarian, lexicologist, linguist, translator and educator. His educational background includes: top scorer in the English subject in the National College Entrance Examination of Jiangsu Province, a BA and an MA from Fudan University, Shanghai, China (exempted from the National Graduate School Entrance Examination due to excellent BA test scores), and a Mandarin Healthcare Interpreter Certificate from the City College of San Francisco, CA, USA. His working history includes: translator for Shanghai TV Station, Evening English News, Lecturer at Jiangnan University, Wuxi, China, Adjunct Professor at the Departments of English and Social Sciences of Trine University (formerly Tri-State University), Angola, Indiana, notary public, and contract high-tech translator for Futurewei Technologies, Inc. in Santa Clara, California, USA. As a translator for over three decades, he has published a lot of translations in various fields in newspapers and journals in China and abroad. Three poems co-translated by him and Chen Du are a finalist in The Gabo Prize for Literature in Translation & Multilingual Texts.