‘if the body does not die’

if the body does not die 
the heart won't wither, either
as it now sits on the tram with its truss
missing the one it once met in a lift
carried to the far
corner of an imaginary
land called luo *

* Independently of its use in this poem (l. 7), for those curious to know, the Luo (“Joluo”) are a people occupying land they call Lolwe or Pinj Luo, an area broadly identified with northern and eastern Uganda, north-eastern Tanzania, southern Sudan, south-western Kenya, and south-western Ethiopia. It is believed that over the past half-a-millennium the Luo basically migrated from the Sudan to the eastern shore of Lake Victoria. Apart from reciting proverbs, children of the Luo are known to partake of competitive riddling exchanges where winners are rewarded with mock marriages. From a different perspective, the Mandarin expression “luo” can mean to arrange, collect, or display.

《“假如肉体不死”》

假如肉体不死
心也不会萎缩
它此时正坐在电车上，它的架子
想念曾在电梯见过的那个
传到一片
想象国土名叫luo的
遥远角落

Dark Places

When you emerge out of them
The world surrounds you with eyes
Your fear is such
You ask the allure to be removed
The seed, when sowed, grows into a tree
That covers part of the sky, the part surrounded with denial
No going back to the roots
What we see is what we die of
If you go back, there are memories only
The part that is the past, as present as the future

《黑暗之地》

你从它们那儿浮现出来时
世界用眼睛环绕了你
你恐惧到如此地步
要把魅力祛除
种子一旦播下，就会长成树
部分遮蔽天空，那个以拒绝环绕的部分
无法回到根部
我们看见的，是我们所死于的
如果你回去，只有记忆
是过去的那个部分，正如现在正如未来

Ditty

I belong to the poetic minority
not the ethnic

I live the majority
’s life, my heart a runaway hermit

I am an ex patriate
and, in that sense, I am of the patriciate

I am the currently objectionable
but I object, to it

I ascend until invisible
a status I always have been in

I talk to deities
hence this, ditty

《小调》

我属于少数诗群
不是族群

我过着大多数
的生活，我的心是逃跑的隐士

我是被放逐国 外的人
从这个意义上讲，我是贵族pa出tri身ciate

我目前是可恶的
但我反，对

我上升至不可见
这从来都是我的地位

我跟神祗交谈
故而有此，小调

Synopsis

the guy is researching
a novel that is yet
to be written

he has to find the
novelist that's in hiding
or the manuscript

now, secure with the head
in his hands
he chooses to defect

to imagi nation

《梗概》

那家伙在为长篇
调研，一部
待写的长篇

他得找到
藏起来的小说家
或手稿

此时，双手
抓牢了脑袋
他选择叛逃

到想 象

You are

You are left alone
in 1840 as in 2012 * 
in Huangzhou as in Kingsbury **

You are
left alone on an unaccompanied night
as on a long working day turning white into yellow

You are left
alone reading black on your own
written in white

You
are left alone writing a poem post
love

You are left alone
with only the tea to talk
to lip-close

You are a dream
that keeps changing
its dreamer by knighting

* 1840 (l. 2): a date evoking the first Opium War or Anglo-Chinese War, notable for its use of what became known as “gunboat diplomacy,” which, by its conclusion, saw the Qing Dynasty cede Hong Kong as well as granting extra-territorial trading and residential rights in major cities such as Guangzhou and Shanghai to the British under the August 1842 Treaty of Nanking. Both the Pearl River Delta and the Yangtze River were areas of significant naval combat. A century later, the war was interpreted under Mao Zedong as the beginning of modern Chinese history and its people’s opposition to feudal and imperial power.
** Huangzhou (l. 3): the author’s birthplace; Kingsbury (l. 3): the author’s dwelling place in the north-eastern suburb of Melbourne mainly developed in the ‘sixties last century, people of Chinese background forming about one-eighth of its population.

《你被》

你被独自留在了
1840，就如留在了2012
在黄州，就像在金斯勃雷

你被
独自留在了一个无人陪伴的夜里
就如一个漫长的工作日，把白变成黄

你被独
自留着读黑
以白书写

你
被独自留着写一首后爱
的诗

你被独自留着
只跟茶交谈
唇依

你是一个梦
夜着
不断改变做梦人

‘One day, that’

One day, that
will be recorded with you
as someone who has done it
or else
you will remain in the dark
the dark of history
the historical dark
the personal dark of
the undiscoverable
that, that and that
what use is the pen
if the hand kills itself
with out 
a word?

《“总有一天，这”》

总有一天，这
会被记录下来，把你
当成某个做过的人
要不
你就会继续呆在黑暗里
历史的黑暗
史的黑暗
不可能发现的一切的
个人的黑暗
这、这，以及这
如果手自杀
没 有
一个字
笔又有何用？

B *

a language
raper
if they taunt u
with b-ing bad
in english
just rape it
till it b
leeds
till its arse
rips so open
you can see the sky
on the other side
of blue
and white
in any case
rape it
till it becomes
another language

《乙》

一种语言
强奸犯
如果他们嘲笑你
不好意思
用英语
只是强奸了
直到它b
利兹
直到它的屁股
切开如此开放
你可以看到天空
另一面 *
的蓝色
和白色
任何状况之下
强奸
直到成为
另一种语言

* Translator’s Note: On my first attempt, I said to myself, “Sorry but I give up. This one defies translation, even self-translation. 12pm, 23/8/17, at home in Kingsbury,” and then I had a thought: “Why not try machine translation? Are you so afraid of making mistakes? Do you want something as perfect as death?” “No,” I said to myself, so I went online, found Google Translate and instantly had the translation, as shown above, at 2.21pm, same day, same place. I made minimal revision except for deleting one Chinese character from“另一方面” and turning it into“另一面”[occurring on the twelfth line and equivalent in English to shifting from “on the other hand” to “on the other side”].

Cold war

Cold, at this birth
Date of someone almost forgotten
If only remembered by TV
Is all in the knee
Caps when the heat
Er is turned on at its utter
Most, someone carrying someone else’s se
Men on her way to a night
Dinner, and someone having called it a day
To a most insidious remark
Snow, once again, is being ex
Pected to dust the day
Haze, to induce a waste
Of poems and to lift an eye
Momentarily to a sky of dancing
Insects, jumping to their instant sui
Side

《冷战》

冷，在这个生
日of某个几乎被忘却
只是被TV记住的人
全在膝
头里，此时，取暖
器打到全
开，某人带着另一人的米青
氵夜一路去参加晚
宴，某人对一句非常阴险的话说
今天到此结束
雪又一次被期
望尘染这日
雾霾，为了诱使一片荒芜
的诗并把眼睛暂时
提升到一片昆虫舞蹈
的天空，立刻跃入自
杀

End

Putting an end to the bullet that stays
wild at heart, unshot

Putting an end to the unnamable
romanticised as feeling tourism

Putting an end to l with a hole
followed by victorious emptiness

Putting an end to the endless thrust
of a star that dies in giving birth to itself

Putting an end to the ship that builds its own
wreckage even when conceived

Putting an end to the night deep within
the marrow of an eye

And putting an end to this hated
time longer than life

《终结》

终结那颗野性地呆在
心中的子弹，没射

终结那无可名状之物
浪漫为感情旅游

终结有个洞的1
跟着是胜利的空虚

终结无始无终的插
of一个星星，死时把自己生出

终结那艘居然在构思时就打造
自己残片的船

终结只眼骨髓中
深植的夜

终结这段比生命更久
的被仇恨的时光

Verb

I like his death
I like the way he deaths

Night is a verb
My quilt covered with clothstones

I like the way he enters into my mind
Like a verb

《动词》

我喜欢他的死
我喜欢他death的方式

夜是一个动词
我的被子盖满衣石

我喜欢他进入我大脑的方式
就像一个动词

Fresh

I read these poems
Many years after your death
In a place you may never have reached
In your wanderings
But their freshness is such
They are like a bunch of spring
Onions just picked
The whiteness near the roots
So fresh

《鲜》

你死后多年
我读这些诗
在一个你可能从未抵达过的地方
在你复数的漂流中
但它们鲜到如此地步
就像一束春
葱，刚摘
葱根旁边的白
太鲜

S and F and L and L and…

songs follow losses follow love follows first love second love third love fourth love fifth love endless love endless losses in a cycle of love lost in love lost for love lost inside love followed by songs that follow losses that fallow love that follows memory that follows memos that mellow with moans that melancholy with bones that hone with holes and horns that follow with love that loses with lone that moves with moon that mates with wind that wounds with loss that loves followed by songs that…

《S和F和L和L和……》

歌随失随爱随初爱二爱三爱四爱五爱无穷尽爱无穷尽失在循环of爱中失落在爱中失落为爱失落在爱里面跟着是歌随失随爱随记忆随备忘录与呻吟而醇厚与骨头而忧郁磨练洞和角随爱失去孤独与月而动与风为侣以失而伤而爱跟着是歌that……

Taking stock

Twenty-four years and five months or thereabouts
in a spiralling trajectory towards zero
you remember what it is like
to make the first step
in the direction of don’ts
doubts and days
that split into months
that further splinter
into years
too late anyway
to blame
the language
a mengster from the sea *
reticent to the degree
of self 
annihilation 
now, at the threshold
of nothing more than
nothing
you are that cloud
brilliantly on weixin ** 
disappearing faster than deletion
let’s wrap up for the sake
of wrapping up
a name is but a ming ***
like any other nom
see that tree that’s been burning 
all along as if it had never existed?

* “Mengster” (l. 13): a deliberate mistake based on “monster.”
** “Weixin” (l. 21): the Chinese multi-functional mobile app initially developed and released by Tencent Holdings (itself based in Shenzhen east of the mouth of the Pearl River in the province of Guangdong) in 2011 and is conservatively estimated as having at least nine hundred million active users.
*** “Ming” (l. 25): half of the Chinese term “mingzi,” meaning the given name (similarly “nom” (l. 26) acts as a portion of “name” although, ironically perhaps, it is also French for “name”).

《盘存》

二十四年及五个来月
螺旋轨迹直至零
你还记得沿着不行
怀疑和日子
走出第一步
是怎么回事
它们裂变成月
进一步碎裂成
年
再怪
语言
已太迟
一头来自大海的mengster
无语到自
戕
的程度
此时，在无比
无更无
的门槛
你是那朵云
在微信横溢
比删除更快
咱们结束，为了
结束
名字不过是ming
就像任何其他的nom
看见那树没有，它一直在燃
烧，仿佛从不存在？

Pigeonholed

“No,” he said. “I’m not manic
I am just different
from those I term
eaters, shitters, sleepers, wakers
and non-thinkers
living in segregated cultures
and separate languages
I am, if you don’t mind knowing
a waster
of time, a liver of multiple lives
a teller of honest lies
whose source is my other
self. I may be a hater
of love and a lover
of hate
but I enjoy the feel
in between
if I talk dream
let me indulge
in it for it’s a drink
unadulterated to the degree
of pure posterity”
said the bird

《入另册》

“不是的，”他说。“我不躁狂
我只是不同于
那些我称之为
吃者、拉者、睡者、醒者
和不思想者
生活在隔离文化
和单开语言中
如果你不在乎知道的话，我是
一个浪费
时间者，一个过着多重生活者
一个说诚实谎言者
谎言之源即我的另一个
自我。我可能是一个恨
爱者和爱
恨者
但我喜欢之间
的感觉
如果我谈梦
那就让我沉溺于
其中，因为梦是饮料
未掺水到纯粹后世
的程度”
那头鸟说

5.41pm

“I wrote too much and too quick back in those days who knows what demon possessed me I wrote I translated I wrote fiction I wrote poetry I wrote in two languages I was bilingual before I am I wrote fiction of about 1 million words I wrote 5000 or 10000 poems I don’t know I haven’t counted who cares if they dismiss them as trash they probably are anyone’s life is trash once lived isn’t that true you are what you wrote or you are what you don’t write life is boring if you do life isn’t boring if you don’t every truth is a truth you can’t deny it I think it’s my turn to shout again because you’ve done yours they’ll have a hard time if they want to assess it because they don’t have the language and they have too much on their plate to worry about what is non-them the world has to wait they have to wait along with the world after they die they try not to because they think if they publish themselves enough they’ll avoid dying the two stillnesses now match when it gets darker”

《5.41pm》

“当年我写得太多也太快谁知道中了什么魔我写我译我写小说我写诗我用两种语言写作我还没像现在这样双语时就已经双语了我小说写了大约1百万字我写了5000首或10000首诗我不知道我没算过谁在乎呢如果他们把这些都当作垃圾也可能都是垃圾任何人的生命都是垃圾如果已经生命过了难道不是这样么你写什么你就是什么或者说你不写什么你就是什么如果你写生活就无聊如果你不写生活就不无聊每一种真话都是真话这你无法否定我想该我请客了因为你已经请过了如果他们想评定的话他们日子会不好过的因为他们不懂语言他们盘子上有太多需要发愁的东西那些非他们的东西世界得等他们得在他们死后跟世界一起等他们试图不等因为他们以为如果他们把他们自己出版得足够多他们就会避免死此时两种静更合拍当更黑暗时”