Yu Jian

there are many rivers in the mountains where I grew up
in deep gorges they flow
they rarely catch a glimpse of sky
there are no expansive sails hoisted high over their surfaces
nor huge flocks of river gulls drawn on by boat-songs
it's only when you've climbed endless ridges and hills
that you hear this river sound
it's only on rafts made of great tree-trunks lashed together
that you dare ride upon these waves
some areas will stay forever unknown to humankind
the freedom of those places belongs to the eagles alone
in the rainy season the waters turn brutal
gale winds on the high plateau push boulders down into valleys
mud dyes the rivers red
as if the mountains were actually bleeding
only when it's calm
do you see the plateau's bulging veins
those people who live on either side of these rivers
may never come to know of one another's existence
but wherever you go in the place I grew up in
you will here people talking about these rivers
as if discussing their gods
...

the people planting potatoes are infected by dawn
infected by the sun as it rises
quickly they work the world is quick at this time
quickly the dew dries quickly the field voles scamper off
at times like this you need to be quick labourers
are quick to remove their jackets to bare their arms
a whole day's work depends on a good morning start this is how
primary school teachers educate their students they
react with speed the invisible world in their classrooms
the morning's Chinese lesson is understood on paper as
a few set phrases left over from yesterday
at dusk the world slows right down
the ranks of the earth slow down facing westwards
formations of corn-fields and low hills
formations of rivers and forests
formations of villages and sunflowers
everything slows down facing westward
all those shadows dragged over things slow right down
like silk wrapped round the body of night
slipping away, bolt by bolt
the potato planters carrying their tools
mingle with the kids coming home from school
they walk slowly over the uplands
home ahead of them not worried about time
the children dawdle
no more homework to do
the adults dawdle
because the potatoes have all been planted
they're all so slow
as if the earth had somehow got into their bodies
but those things planted at speed
have in no sense slowed down nor have they ever gained speed
incapable both of speed and slowness
they've simply begun and all they have to do is grow
is be from morning to night
from spring to autumn
neither hurried nor slow right to the very end
...

here I am in a valley in Kata Tjuta

a famous Australian tourist destination

and standing alone in this nation's stone fortresses:

countless stones scattered everywhere

ochre-red earth aborigines like eggs laid by God knows what

tiny birds hidden inside to be hatched out one day

I'm imagining what kind of bird that might be I play around with

one of them right up until sunset's footsteps walk up to me

and I have to decide to take it with me or not there's something so cute about it

rolling it to one side it suddenly becomes clear to me that it looks even more

like its red-skinned neighbours sculpted heads scorched by the sun

arranged on a book-shelf, wouldn't that be best? this stone

lives over 6000 kilometres from where I live it would be one of a kind in China I decide

furtively skirting the warning signs stone hidden in my back-pack

back at the hotel I find I cannot sleep as if what I have brought back with me

is a ball of wild-fire its body unsuited to the shampoo smell of my room

in the middle of the night it broke through its shell I danced with a fever in my arms

tossing backwards and forwards I was thinking to myself how I could get it past Customs?

it was just a stone so why did I want to take it with me? why?

it wasn't gems lanolin beauty creme postage stamps no

a stone I just couldn't work it out was it because it looked like the local indigenous people

because it might have hatched out wings? could it perhaps

transform some McDonalds fat man in Customs momentarily

into a detective with a penchant for solving mysteries? unshakeably seeking out

the motive behind it? and connecting me with less savoury aspects of this world

for example with an out-of-date slave trader?

I really liked this stone primitive divine force how it moved me

everywhere you turn the world is artificial long ago I become numb insensitive

at the same time I was terrified that this slight act of theft may have offended

some King of the Rock among the stone heaps of Kata Tjuta

I couldn't shake the feeling of His power He was no manager of scenic spots

He collected no entrance tickets silent concealed but supreme ruler over all

sometimes an curly-headed aborigine with shining eyes

would smile at me, surreptitiously squatting down in the bush another time

I was startled by the sight of a scarred, motley lizard crawling down a tree-root

looking like an aged sovereign walking his royal carpet I was so scared I broke out in a cold sweat

in Australia like an emu I slept a night with a stone in my embrace

it made me suspicious of my own shadow I trembled with fear

I went and put it outside the hotel in a wasteland that is

another wasteland I had moved one small object on the surface of this planet

18 kilometres towards the south-west and in doing so

had sneakily altered the order of the world

but I hope my mischief brings me no misfortune
...

unsure how to address it it was still sitting at the head of the table only a moment ago

the custodian of a bottle of stout absolutely indispensable it has a sense of its own status

signifying conviviality as the sun goes down and the depth of froth in a glass

opened with a pop at the start of the evening meal the action strikingly similar to that of a bullfrog

the waiter even believes that it really is a frog

believes that something on this table covered with cooked food has unexpectedly been brought back to life

he is vexed by his misunderstanding and immediately shifts his attention to a toothpick

he is the last one after him the world gives it no further thought

with no other entries on it in the dictionary no original meanings extended meanings transferred meanings

but those dishes originally arranged in submission before it signify nothing less than the flavours of Sichuan cuisine

the napkin is touched by the hand of a general the roses in full bloom an allusion to privilege

in an eccentric arc it exited this gathering an arc not its own

the brewery never designed such a line for its product

it now lies on the floor with the cigarette butts footprints bones and other rubbish

an unrelated jumble an impromptu design of no use to anyone

but its plight is even more wretched a butt reminds the world of a slob

a bone brings to mind a dog or a cat and footprints of course allude to a human presence

it is waste its whiteness being nothing more than its whiteness and its shape nothing more than its shape

it falls beyond the reach of our adjectives

I wasn't a drinker then it was I who opened the bottle of beer

and for this reason I noticed its strange leap its simple disappearance

I suddenly tried to imagine the pop it made jumping out into space but was unable to

mine was the body of an author of a collection of poetry and sixty kilograms of corporeal existence

all I did was bend down and pick up this alluring small white object

it was hard with a serrated rim which cut into my finger

and made me feel a sharpness so unlike that of knives
...

from somewhere invisible
the crow kicks aside blocks of autumn cloud with its toes
and dives into the sky in my eyes hung with the wind and the light
the sign of the crow sulphur brew of a nun of black night
croaking and piercing a hole in a flocking bird mattress
to perch on a branch in my heart
just as in the days of my youth conquering crows' nests in the treetops of my home town
my hands will never again touch that autumn landscape
hands scaling another tall tree intending to pluck another crow
from its darkness
crow once it was a kind of bird meat a pile of feathers and entrails
now a desire for narrative the impulse to speech
and perhaps it is self-consolation in the face of adversity
escape from a mass of inauspicious shadow
this kind of labour is invisible compared to childhood days
reaching with my bravest hand into black nests full of pointed beaks this is even more difficult
when a crow perches in the wilds of my heart
what I wish to give voice to is not is symbol not its metaphor or its mythology
what I wish to give voice to is crow just as in years gone by
I never found dove in a crow's nest
since childhood my hands have been covered in the thick calluses of language
but as a poet I have never given voice to a crow

with the circumspection and far-sightedness of age proficiency in various inspirations styles and rhymes
just as when one begins to write dipping the brush deep into the ink-well
I thought that the syllables had to be drenched in black from the very start to handle this crow
skin flesh and bones the flows of the blood as well as
the flight-paths disclosed in the sky all drenched in black
a crow begins in this blackness in flight towards an outcome drenched in black
from the moment of birth it enters into solitude and prejudice
into universal persecution, pursuit and capture
no bird it is crow
in a world full of evil every single second
ticks its ten thousand pretexts in the name of the forces of light or beauty
guns are trained on this living representative of the powers of darkness and fired
but for all that it cannot escape beyond the bounds of crow-being
neither fly higher encroaching on eagle territory
nor condescend to the lowly realm of the ants
cave-maker of the skies both its own black hole and black drill-bit
on high and alone from the heights of a crow
it sets a course according to its bearings its time its passengers
it is one happy-go-lucky big-mouthed crow
and outside it the world is a mere fabrication
no more than the boundless inspiration of crow
you people the vastness of the land and the sky the vastness beyond the vastness
you people Yu Jian and ensuing generations of readers
are nothing but food in the nest of a crow

I thought that a few dozen words would be enough to handle this crow
description has made it a black box in words
but I do not know who holds the key to the box
who thinks up secret codes in crow-darkness
in another description it appeared as a priest wearing puttees
beneath the mighty walls of Heaven, this holy one in search of an entrance
but I know now that the abode of the crow is closer to God than the priest's
perhaps while perched on the spire of a church one day
it saw the fair body of the Nazarene
when I describe the crow as a swan nourished on the everlasting blackness of night
the actual bird shining with the light of a swan flies past that radiant swamp beside me
and at once I lose all faith in this metaphor
I attach the verb to descend to its wings
yet it soars to the Ninth Heaven like a jet
I call it taciturn and it immediately comes to rest on wordless
as I look at this lawless wild witch-bird
a swarm of verbs is drawn to my head crow verbs
I cannot utter tongue fastened down with rivets
I see them speeding up into the sky vaulting
diving down into the sunlight then gathering again above the clouds
leisurely and carefree forming crow-motion pictures

that day like a hollow-hearted scarecrow I stood in an empty field
and all my thoughts were steeped in crow
I clearly sensed that crow felt its dark flesh
its dark heart but I could not escape the sunless fortress
as it soared so I soared
how would I ever get back out of crow in order to catch it
that day when I looked up into the blue sky each crow was already drenched in darkness
a corpse-eating crowd I should have turned a blind eye earlier in the sky of my home town
I stalked them once so innocent then
a whiff of the stink of death and I'd panic and loosen my grip
as for the sky I should have kept my eyes on the skylarks white cranes
how I love and understand those beautiful angels
but one day I saw a bird
an ugly bird the colour of crow
hanging from the grey ropes of the sky
with mangled legs stiff and straight as the limbs of a puppet
in crooked flight on the slopes of the sky
circling a centre of some kind out tracing
an enormous insubstantial circle
and I heard a chorus of ominous cawings
suspended somewhere out of sight
and I wanted to say something
to declare to the world that I was not afraid
of those invisible sounds
...

a fruit full of heart-broken juices placed on morning's table
Cézanne tablecloth diamond of beasts' dreaming
the sunlight spins moving shadows directing the fruit's blue face into the light-source
plunging its red face into deep darkness its green face into mirrors
three flags covert in the spectrum no discernible relation to any tree, ever
no moving creature near it its existence an education
china dish, immobile knives and forks, immobile milk, immobile a Sunday of the aristocracy
in that moment of enjoyment its heart-broken juices are linked to a troupe of bears
but those bears have yet to come together right now a thousand miles away they're asleep under trees
dreaming of this diamond full of unsweet, broken-hearted juices
...

a god-given day utterly radiant

the sky ties on its blue apron like the mother of all Sundays

who sets out at daybreak for markets of dawn

in her basket fresh flowers bloom

southern valley-basin a read clam oozing mud-slime

the lakes too are azure fish swim in them

young women lift their breasts clear of the village in the direction of the hives

in forest clearings everything female is conceiving

a cicada full of tenderness sits outside the forest-keeper's hut

how blessed I am to strike a day like this the sun up

one of all the world's living creatures mine, too, is a life in the light

o God I know your secret



far from the great river I discuss new makes of car on a dark street

the air hurts us you are my blind spot for so many years now I've held myself apart from things

all I see are the wigs in the rows in front of me the plastic flowers representing some kind of southern flora

in the shadows of the mountains you turned into a bitch-wolf o Shanban lover of the jack-fruit of the South

that day I crossed the Shweli River a dark-skinned daughter of the tropics lay floating on its reddish waters

o bare-foot girl star-like beetles clung to your ragged skirt

and on your neck: the dust of palm trees
...

all flows towards modernity So many people flowed over London Bridge

"Every now and then I also converse in English"

so many people the poet never dreamed that this

What is that sound high in the air

would attract so many readers particular about the rhyme schemes of classical Chinese poetry

he never dreamed that God's old gardens would cause so much heart-ache

so many hands squeezed into this cabin clutching boarding passes

like withered branches snatching at the edge of the blaze

Here there is no sound of complaint Apart from sighs

Racking the forehead of eternity



I left my old home and set off for distant places I had left behind the home where I dwelt so long

in time's backyard there is no arriving at the beginning of things

drawing away from beginnings towards what comes later and yet barging into the lobby of the future arriving at the station

arranged in alphabetical order Unreal City, Under the brown fog of a winter noon

photocopied in lifelike multiples shunted here and there like chain stores

city A city B city C city V city R city M city W

grey airports have already sprawled their enormous bodies, their teeth and claws across the outskirts of so many countries

like dinosaurs hatched in nests of concrete poking long illuminated tongues out into the darkness

to swallow us swallowing the entire flight crew air hostesses maintenance staff Chinese

Greeks Mayans American Indians all the bigwigs petty crooks proletarian elements Buddhists

prostitutes vegetarians cowboys presidents all of them let's get off passengers

this is the only way out no one can refuse

In the distance All we can see Is the enormous wasteland of eternity

in through here out through there

it's only nine hours it only takes the press of a few keys "Enter!"

I already find myself in a large tract of alphabet two jug-like ears flapping
...

every day as the chimneys belch smoke
he comes riding to work on his
old "Bell"-brand bicycle

past the administration building
past the forging shop
past the perimeter wall of the storehouse
to that small hut

workers standing in workshop doorways
say when they see him
Luo Jiasheng's here

no one knows anything about him
no one asks him anything about himself
the whole factory calls him Luo Jiasheng

the workers are always knocking on his door
wanting their watches repaired electric meters repaired
their radios repaired

during the Cultural Revolution
he was expelled from the factory:
in a suitcase belonging to him
someone had found a tie

when he was allowed to come back to work
he still rode that old "Bell"
Luo Jiasheng
got married without anyone knowing
he invited no one to the wedding
at the age of forty-two
he became a father

in the same year
he died
an electric furnace opened an enormous gash
in his head
it was shocking

on the day of the funeral
his wife did not attend
a few workers carried his coffin up into the hills
they said he was short
he wasn't heavy
the watches he repaired
were better than new

the chimneys belch smoke
workers stand in the workshop doorways
Luo Jiasheng
hasn't come to work
...

whoever notices how many leaves the wind
knocks from these trees
and whoever sees this many leaves
on such a beautiful, sun-lit afternoon
suddenly falling all of them dying
is bound to shudder
...