Twelve Poems by George O 'Connor (Chinese and Western Poetry Translation Column No.26)
Translated by Shi Chunbo
Father's wallet
It was August, a long time ago.
The end of the dying summer.
We bid farewell to the platform shaded by maple trees.
His ashes were put in a poplar box,
Back home, began to choose:
Take this away,
Leave this.
There are three black wallets in the drawer.
Lying flat under a white shirt,
Leather is almost old.
Kraft paper is very thin,
The edges are ground into lace.
The first one I opened released a bunch of wires,
It spirals down.
Like a delicate wing
Left over from previous lives.
Nothing else was left.
Except for a bunch of vague names
And faces, we are ticket stubs.
How many times, the scorching sun
From the west of the city to the windows,
Traffic jam, pain is hard to move
In that old Volkswagen, this lump in my pocket
Does this bother him? all
Will eventually break up, this endless income
Friction with expenditure, day after day.
Run out of life.
Sometimes the last thing you carry with you.
The hardest thing to give up, that moment
In front of the open drawer
Holding an empty wallet,
You suddenly remembered the past,
Only lighter, it floats like a wish,
In the promise that the world finally fulfilled,
The promise of hunger.
wren
To the ballet dancer l.n.
On one occasion, a wren
Trapped in the garage
Knock one glass window into another.
Finally, he squatted on the windowsill exhausted.
My slow words comforted me. Heaven/God knows
What did the sweet singer hear?
Its black eyes
Glare, despair,
I was allowed.
Holding it trembling,
This huge and tiny heart
This immeasurable vulnerability.
Hit my finger hard.
Come out, I let go,
Determination comes from
All prisoners
* * * desire to enjoy:
The sky is enough
People or birds,
The tiny spine of the soul
Dance and open their respective latches.
aim at
Of course, you have to load the bullet.
The direction of your eyes.
But the heart is a noisy organ:
Just as your eyes move to
Bull's-eye, slightly beating.
You were caught off guard.
You learn to hold your breath.
Pull the trigger.
So you won't hurt yourself.
I mean, so slow, so gentle.
Your pulse is getting a hint.
Shut up. Trust me,
When the end of the bucket
Black scene
Start repairing,
It is not enough to stop thinking.
Your blood needs
Very quiet.
You must die.
sunrise
I must have been in my early twenties then.
Despair due to ignorance.
I was driving all night.
If you smoke, alone or in combination
They never fit.
It's so cold at night
In April, the roof under my window
Twilight
Is turning pale.
I walked out of the windowsill and waited.
The gradual outline of everything
Separate, completely independent
Then the light.
Soft gold touches the branches,
Cheeks and fingers, and the roof
One side of every pebble.
The gift of light, without language,
Every moment of this world
Has stood up to meet it.
signal
You said those moths tonight
It's the semaphore of leaning against the window,
Nothing passed. They saw it.
Balance your silver shoulder angle.
The real moon, but the actual route.
Just wandering.
Sometimes we enjoy the sunshine.
It seems so far away that we put ourselves.
Twist each other's eyes tighter.
Until our faces are covered with shadows
Shuttle in front of the lamp, the lamp
Is the only way for me to see you clearly.
So one of us triggered the switch.
Turn off the lights.
At this time, the wings spread out.
Peeling silently from the window.
Like thoughts, or the last feather,
A white lie shaken off the pillow.
calligraphy
endless night
These oak trees split.
As if there was only light.
They jumped down along the axe.
Shiny as paper.
The direction of wood grain is like a river.
Through hard land,
Or the smoke depends on the frozen sky
Mysterious curl.
I can almost imagine.
At dawn.
In a wooden house on the rocky shore.
Interpret a story.
A woman woke up and lit the embers.
Then stand by and open the window.
Comb your hair.
She cocked her head like a child.
Think hard about a problem.
As the night grew dark, one of her hands
Raise the waves of sleepiness,
The other combed their flames.
Six yellows of wheat
"No yellow, no blue"
-Van Gogh, Letter to Emile Bernard,1June 888.
A method for buttering wind with sunlight,
One rusts like a scattered bone,
There is also a kind of green that suggests honey again.
I remember. Trekking
The richness of the load is still there.
Practice bending, their voices are very thin.
Do it like cooing.
A few clouds quietly.
Wipe a corner of the field,
Overturned soil
Reflect a deep violet.
Some beards have faded from the rain.
Learn with seeds
Flashing linen, dull
Jump bronze, these stalks
Interlaced lines
Swaying in my heart
Then you will see everything.
Just a wish as simple as the blue sky.
pay expenses
The shadows of six crows in disguise passed by.
Then the sickle swept a path.
The sunlight cut the straw into pieces.
Black-eyed Woods, golden stubble,
The sky is here.
Left its blue knee.
replica
I once rode a donkey at sunset.
Farewell to the cooing hut
A pigeon of the Republic of China came from there.
Spinning and rising, like Zhang Mingliang's wings,
Along the gravel-strewn road,
Last year's stubble was stuck in both hands,
Come to the hill above the valley
Wait until evening
Has embarked on the footsteps of thieves.
Come out of Yang Shulin by the stream.
The donkey shook his rough ears twice.
Suddenly look serene, when the head.
The disappearing jet solidified the street.
Between things
Draw a new matrix,
The sound of their engines
A huge iron ball.
Roll into the distant corridor.
Behind the highway.
1000 maple seeds
Erect in the gravel
Burning orange light.
Like a raised hand.
map
Father is not a draftsman,
But I learned it at the age of ten
How to use crayons and soft cloth
Draw a piece of onion skin paper as
A continent, or a blue ocean.
Extending to the coast where green is faintly visible.
translucent paper
He took my hand,
Soon, I stopped copying,
Let the pen write freely
All rivers and borders
Darkness is insurmountable,
The fictional coastline trembled and the heat rose.
He always said that scale is the key.
I stripped the dry ink off my fingers.
I don't understand what he means.
The map I'm looking at now
It's all small local checks.
Mark the house
This road turns south here.
Red dotted line
Reveal real estate
Boundary.
Visible water area
Still blue,
This measure is taken from life:
Ten thousand steps is an inch.
cumulus
For Thomas? hall
Through the bathroom window
In summer, the temperature keeps rising and the sun sets.
Half a mile west
The roof of the sanatorium of the Institute of Health Science and Technology was punctured,
Ten antennas were nailed in the sky there,
The 25th floor leads directly to heaven.
These days, I often get up at night and have an echo.
My body caught a glimpse of the opposite glass window.
Narrow ribbon, black.
Except for one, the third row on the lower right.
A white hyphen is still burning.
The one next to it.
Sometimes a flash of light flashes.
It seems that the flashlight swept the whole room.
Search for a face, a name,
Or a wrist sticking out from under the sheets.
I felt my breath at that moment.
Wet chest, stormy cells.
Drifting eastward, their tops
Climbing mysteriously at night,
Then rain, one drop, another drop.
Lost in the pouring,
Falling towards the city lights,
Shine, countless, shine.
Savings day
I'm shuttling between rooms again.
Pick up this clock and that,
Twist their delicate wheels,
Half thinking about daylight.
Save at one end,
Lost at the other end.
I can continue the conversation easily.
Probation and injustice,
Acquired and abandoned,
But where will this take us?
I'd rather consider my mother's family.
Wall clock, the year it hangs,
It's old in the lobby of her parents' Ridge Bay.
Its wooden clockwork ticks.
There is a faint smell of coats and cigars.
Last night, alone in front of the bed,
She put the black pointer
Dial 12,
Hearing ratchet's brisk conversation,
When the confiscation time rings in the local area.
First appeared on its face.
See the numbers, see Rome
A powerful blow. After a long time
I imagine the Roman legion
Forcibly crossing an arid province,
Dazzling sunshine,
Dust from all over the world falls on their sandals.
In the attic
It's very hot in summer, and our white single-storey building
Standing on fresh land, there are no trees,
In those stormy days, I often walk along the stairs.
Heat climbed into the attic, liquid on the rafters.
Baked into xiang zhu.
Packed in two drum cardboard barrels.
Father's wartime khaki uniform,
Flat lamb hair flying boots,
Our wool hats and scarves, lost in
It was a snowy afternoon.
I would like to use their steel roof as a gong to ring the bell.
My five-tone elegy, towards the sacred nonsense,
Then I went downstairs obsessively dizzy and sweated.
Walking into the suddenly miraculously cool room,
The high temperature we experience every day.
Just breathing air.
No matter under the burning roof
I sang,
False carols or blind prayers,
The dark moths of those nights
Humming the song that opened under my window.
Flowers in August
And the moon that tore open the screen window.
Chinese and Western Poetry/Discipline /3 177466
● English original poems
My father's wallet
It was August and it was over.
The long summer of death.
We put his ashes in a poplar box.
In the shade of a maple tree,
Go home and start sorting:
Take this,
Leave this.
There are three black wallets in the drawer.
A flat plate under a white shirt,
The leather has worn away even more.
Instead of a membrane,
The edges are frayed into lace.
The first time I opened it, I untied a bunch of cotton wool.
Spiral descent
Like a little wings.
From something that was once alive.
There's nothing left
In a pile of vague names,
Faces, the remnants of our past.
How many times did the sun squint in the glass?
All the way from the city to the west,
One after another, sweating profusely.
Is this big guy in his pocket in the old Volkswagen?
A pain in the ass anything
Will collapse, these endless incomes
And payment, this daily friction
That killed a life.
Sometimes the last thing you have.
At that moment, it was hard to give up.
In front of the open drawer
Holding an empty wallet,
When everything suddenly comes back to you,
But lighter, floating like a wish,
A promise, a hungry promise.
The world has begun to maintain.
wren
To L.N., the ballet dancer
Once in the garage, a trapped wren
Jump from one glass to another.
Before squatting on the windowsill exhausted,
My slow words soothed. Who knows?
What does it hear, sweet singer, its black eyes
Broad and desperate,
But it torments me.
Hold back this trembling,
This huge and tiny heart,
This fragile infinity
Hit my finger hard.
Outside, my hands are open,
Only this wish
Any imprisoned shares:
Enough sky
For people or birds,
For the little bones of the soul
Dance your own dance.
Get the range
Are you sure you want to put your bullet
Where you look.
But the heart is a noisy organ:
Just when you see the scene hovering.
Target, a small beat
Will call you away.
You learned not to breathe,
Start pulling the trigger
Far enough away, it won't hurt you.
I mean, so slow, so quiet.
Your pulse took the hint.
Shut up. Trust me,
When black beads
At the end of the bucket
Started to sink,
It is not enough to give up thinking.
Your blood needs to flow away.
Very quiet.
You're dead.
sunrise
I must have been 20 years old.
Despair due to ignorance.
I keep myself awake.
After an argument all night.
Unfitting smoky words
And it's not suitable for being together.
Although the night is very cold.
It was April, on the roof
Under my window.
Just turned pale with dawn.
I slid across the windowsill and waited.
With the appearance of tables
Separate, completely lonely
Then the rays.
Soft gold touches the branches,
Face and fingers, one side
Every particle on the shingle roof.
Dedicated to light, wordless,
Every moment in the world
It has already begun to welcome it.
signal
You said those moths tonight
The semaphore on the window,
Nothing was sent. They saw it.
Their silver shoulders are balanced.
A real moon, turn
Real spiral route.
Sometimes the light we share
Seems far away, we twist.
Tighter and tighter glare
Until our shadowed faces are illuminated by lights.
It's all I've seen of you.
Then one of us goes to find the switch
Put out the light.
Now spread your wings.
Silently out of the glass
Like thoughts, or the last feathers,
A white lie rolled down from the pillow.
calligraphy
Such a long and fulfilling night
These oak logs have cracked.
As if the light were alone.
Spring is like a shiny page
From the axe.
Grain reads like a river.
Winding through the difficult countryside,
Or curl mysteriously like smoke.
Under the frozen sky.
I can almost imagine.
Uncover a story
Start near dawn.
In a cabin on the rocky coast.
A woman wakes up and lights the embers,
Then stand at the window.
Comb her hair.
She cocked her head like a child.
Come up with a problem.
In the thin darkness, one of her hands
Set off sleeping waves,
The other brushes started firing.
Six yellows of wheat
There is no blue without yellow.
Van Gogh, Letter to Emile Bernard, arles,1June 988.
One paints the wind with sunlight,
One rusts like a fallen bone,
The other suggests honey green,
Memories rich
The burdened line is still learning.
How to bend, their voices are thin.
Dry ticking.
Those scarred clouds
A corner of the field
Say nothing, although the earth
Return to deep purple.
Some beards bleached by rain
Bow your head with seeds
Glittering blonde hair, a little dark.
Flame bronze, these stems
Mixed lineation
So swaying in my heart
People may see it all.
Only the blue of simple wishes
And expenses.
Six shadows disguised as crows.
But the sickle swept through the passage
The sun washed the rows.
Black-eyed Woods, short gold
Even the sky
Fell on its blue knees.
replica
I rode a donkey at sunset.
From the cooing barn
a flock of pigeons
Spinning like a bright wing,
Along the gravel road,
The corn was harvested last year.
On both sides are hills above the valley.
I waited there all night
Already walking like a thief
From Xiao Yang's Woods by the stream.
The donkey flicked his rough ears twice.
Quiet, just like overhead.
The frozen path of an invisible jet
Tracking east and west,
Draw a new grid with chalk,
The sound of their engines
A huge iron ball.
Spread out in the distant corridor.
1000 maple seeds
Erect in gravel
On the way home
Orange flame
Like a group of people raising their hands.
map
My father is not a cartographer,
But I learned it at the age of ten
Crayons and soft cloth
Can make an onion skin blush
Into a whole continent, or a blue ocean shoal
Green tremor towards the shore.
On the membrane
He will hold my hand,
But soon I stopped tracking,
Pen writes freely.
Great rivers, borders
It's dark and airtight,
Horror novels of the steaming coast.
He would say, it's all about scale,
When I peeled India from my fingers,
I wonder what he means.
The map I read these days
They are all local. This road turns here.
Near Little Square in the south.
Marks a house.
This red dotted line
Revealed the boundaries
Ownership of property.
No matter what kind of water there is,
Maybe it's still blue,
But this ratio comes from life:
Ten thousand steps per inch.
cumulus
For Thomas Hall.
Through the bathroom window
Summer weather climbs and sunsets.
Pierce yourself half a mile west.
At the Methodist church,
Ten antennas stand in the sky.
25th floor conductor
Straight to heaven. I got up late.
These nights, answer
Body, catch a glimpse of narrow band
All-black window glass,
Save one, three on the right,
A white hyphen is still burning.
Sometimes from the next
A brightness flare
As if a flashlight swept across the room,
Search for a face, a name,
Wrist sticking out of the sheet.
Just then, I felt the breath.
Get rid of the moisture in my chest and drift
Storm units have been heading east, on top of them
In the invisible night,
Then the water drops, drop by drop.
Lost in the downpour,
Falling towards the city lights,
Shiny, uncountable, shiny.
daylight saving time
I wandered around the room again.
Hold up this clock and that clock,
Twist their little wheels,
Don't care much about light
Save at one end,
Lost on the other side.
I can go on easily.
About probation and injustice,
Gains and losses,
But what will that bring us?
I'd rather consider wall clock.
At my mother's house, in the years when it hung,
Even then, in her parents' Bay Ridge Hall,
Its wooden clockwork box
It smells vaguely of coats and cigars.
Last night, alone before going to bed,
She will become a black hand
By twelve o'clock,
Hearing the rattling of the ratchet wheel,
The gong of punishment moment.
The first thing I saw was its face.
Numerically, Roman
Suffer heavy losses. After a long time
I imagine the legion,
A forced March through arid provinces,
Dazzling sunshine,
World dust on their sandals.
In the attic
In hot summer, our white bungalow
There are no trees in the new land,
In those hot days, I will climb the stairs.
The heat in the attic, the turpentine in the rafters
Baked into xiang zhu.
In two cardboard barrels.
My father's wartime khaki pants,
His flat wool-lined flying boots,
We lost our wool hat and scarf.
A snowy and steaming afternoon.
On their steel covers, I knocked.
My five-note elegy, to the sacred,
Then concentrate on the ground, Adrip
The miracle of the room getting cold,
We wade to keep warm every day.
Just breathing air.
No matter what I sing
Under the burning roof,
Wrong chanting or blind prayer,
Those moths that are dark at night
The flowers in August are humming.
Open it under my window
The moon tore open the screen.