Xi Chuan Poems

In Goya's paintings they brought nightmares
For artists. They flutter up and down
Left and right. They whisper stealthily
But never wake the artists up

Indescribable joy appears on
Their all but human features. These birdlike
Creatures which are not birds, with their pitch-black bodies
At one with darkness, are like seeds that never flower

Like spirits with no hope of deliverance
Blind and vicious, led by their will
They sometimes hang upside-down from branches
Like so many withered leaves, arousing pity

And in other stories
They rest in damp caves
When the sun sets behind the mountains they emerge
To search for food, or to mate, then vanish without trace

They can drag a sleepwalker off to join their gang
Snatch the torch from his hand and put it out
They can drive an invading wolf away
Send it tumbling speechless into a ravine

At night, if a child refuses to go to bed
It's because a bat has evaded
The nightwatchman's smarting eyes
And draws near to tell his fortune

One, two, three bats
Have no property, no home, how can they
Bring happiness? The waxing and waning of the moon
Has stripped them of feathers, they are ugly and anonymous

Their stony-heartedness had never moved me
Until one summer's day at dusk
Walking past my old home I saw a crowd of children playing
And even more bats fluttering over their heads

The twilight cast shadows in the lane
And coated the bats with a layer of gold
They fluttered outside the doors with their peeling paint
But as to fortune-telling they were completely silent

Among ancient things a bat conveys
A kind of nostalgia. Their leisurely manner
Held me there, and for a long time I lingered
In that inner-city district, in the lane where I grew up
...

Some day I will sleep forever without waking
Never again will I see the cypresses of the northern plains

These cypresses at their mysterious prayers
These black and dripping churches
These swallows perched stiffly on the rushes
These oil-lamps

One day I will sleep forever without waking
While the wind blowing through the iron branches of the cypresses
will remain in the heart of a corpse
...

As a rule when everything is finished
And only music drifts about like twilight
I will notice
His portrait hanging on the wall
High mountains, foxes flitting past
Pablo Neruda
Starts to watch
This room
Covered in dust and aphorisms
While I sit there
Leafing through books and newspapers
Chatting with friends
A hundred times the sun shines in
But I always miss the occasion
And Pablo
Always seems like a shadow
His chubby chin sunk down
Searching the room
For its young owner
When I am sleepy and unable to dream
Of sails and summer
He writes poems for me
And stealthily
Leaves them on my grubby desk
...

There is a mystery you cannot control
You can only play the role of a bystander
And allow the power of the mystery
To transmit its signals from some faraway place
Emitting beams of light, piercing your heart
Like tonight, at Hargai
This desolate place far from any city
In the high tablelands of Qinghai and Tibet
By a railway station the size of a broad bean
I lift my head up and gaze at the starry sky
At this moment the Milky Way is silent; tenuous wings
Sink down, startling some wretched horses
Into fleeing towards me, I stand motionless
And let the splendour of the stars like millions of feet
Trample my shoulders into an altar
Like a child receiving the Eucharist
I pluck up my courage, but hold my breath
...

One stormy night I will open by myself
The lonely locked room beside me

I may find a candle-stub, a box of matches
A bolt of spiritual lightning to set me shivering

A stone sinks in the ocean five hundred metres off shore
The soul of a bird nesting in the cliffs is fervent and imperilled

Yes, the ocean is nearby, one stormy night
I will listen to the pounding of the waves and light the candle

Write life's sun on the land
And the death-date of all things

But I am a young man walking towards the sea
After experiencing hardships I will be fully fledged

Three knocks on the door reverberate in my heart
The tide leaps onto the sandy shore like a great host of turtles

This night's dagger, this flotsam from a seaborne ship
I pat the ancient ark, the bright moon hangs high

One stormy night I will open by myself
The lonely locked room beside me
...

The basic meaning of snow is purity, but what it brings
Is absence: absence of starlight
Absence of horses' hooves clattering
In the cold streets and alleyways, absence of
The bright red nose of the courier coming from Chang'an

A crackling fire deepens the silence
The soul now has depth, like a well
Should someone venture to peer into it
He will not see himself
But another face that will astonish him

The snow that covers all things
Swirls above them like solemn music
The eyebrows of besieged warriors are frozen
Their hair turns gray, they have entered
The vast domain of what we call ‘darkness'

The snow has brought absence, for this
The fire is singing its quiet song
Dawn sprouts silently, in your ears
There is only snow — you have not yet seen
Anyone to bring you charcoal on a snowy day
...

Birds are the sky's language
Their song holds a stillness
Black flocks may appear suddenly
But this in no way prevents
Injured and solitary birds
From huddling together somewhere

Birds in the sunlight
Birds in the moonlight
Soaring lumps of mud
Crystals of memory
Flames can rise no higher than wings
Nor can the sky be lower

In the yearning of birds
Trees ascend from the earth
In the yearning of birds
Fruit towers up into the clouds
A city built of layers of rock
Gives them a holiday for love

I see such birds
Flying out of sight with grain in their beaks
But every morning
There is a big bird
Circling over my head
It is an angel dressed in splendid armour

It is the bird in my dreams
Its task is to keep watch over the earth
Through it stars emerge
A human world
Adjoins a divine world
Our ecstasy is our going astray
...

Birds are the sky's language
Their song holds a stillness
Black flocks may appear suddenly
But this in no way prevents
Injured and solitary birds
From huddling together somewhere

Birds in the sunlight
Birds in the moonlight
Soaring lumps of mud
Crystals of memory
Flames can rise no higher than wings
Nor can the sky be lower

In the yearning of birds
Trees ascend from the earth
In the yearning of birds
Fruit towers up into the clouds
A city built of layers of rock
Gives them a holiday for love

I see such birds
Flying out of sight with grain in their beaks
But every morning
There is a big bird
Circling over my head
It is an angel dressed in splendid armour

It is the bird in my dreams
Its task is to keep watch over the earth
Through it stars emerge
A human world
Adjoins a divine world
Our ecstasy is our going astray
...

Birds are the sky's language
Their song holds a stillness
Black flocks may appear suddenly
But this in no way prevents
Injured and solitary birds
From huddling together somewhere

Birds in the sunlight
Birds in the moonlight
Soaring lumps of mud
Crystals of memory
Flames can rise no higher than wings
Nor can the sky be lower

In the yearning of birds
Trees ascend from the earth
In the yearning of birds
Fruit towers up into the clouds
A city built of layers of rock
Gives them a holiday for love

I see such birds
Flying out of sight with grain in their beaks
But every morning
There is a big bird
Circling over my head
It is an angel dressed in splendid armour

It is the bird in my dreams
Its task is to keep watch over the earth
Through it stars emerge
A human world
Adjoins a divine world
Our ecstasy is our going astray
...