Booming, Spring Shoves Open the Door

By MO FEI

Booming, spring shoves open the door,
Blocks of ice wash down the river.
While some people stay in youth,
Some regret and grow old.
Every poplar winding
Along the road of thirty years,
Branchfuls of flowers, overnight,
Breathing into the window cold sweetness.
You see snow in the shade
Folded in, gradually, by distant sunlight.
Wood that keeps sinking
Finally collapses on the gable.
A fence barrier, though broken,
Still holds against the siege.
In the room that no one enters,
Something comes into being, once said.

 

Translated by Stephen Haven and Li Yongyi

 

Mo Fei is a poet, photographer, gardener and naturalist whose poetry collection,Words and Things, was published in 1997.

[Purchase your copy of Issue 05 here]

From the beginning, The Common has brought you transportive writing and exciting new voices. We are committed to supporting writers and maintaining free, unrestricted access to our website, but we can’t do it without you. Become an integral part of our global community of readers and writers by donating today. No amount is too small. Thank you!

Booming, Spring Shoves Open the Door

Related Posts

Contrail across blue sky

July 2025 Poetry Feature: New Poems by our Contributors

GEOFFREY BROCK
Sing, O furrow-browed youth, / of the contrails scoring the sky, / bright as lines of cocaine / until, as they age, the eye // loses them to the blue… / Sing of the thin-skinned plane / that made those ephemeral clouds, / and of all that each contains: // the countless faceless strangers

Fenway Park

Before They Traded Devers

AIDAN COOPER
I don’t know I’m not paying attention I’m crunching / peanut shells thinking Murakami began to write novels / because of baseball why don’t I / my dad’s grumpy / I’m vegetarian now & didn’t want a frank & yes it’s probably / a phase he’s probably right but it’s a good phase

Cover of All Is The Telling by Rosa Castellano

An Embodied Sense of Time: Raychelle Heath Interviews Rosa Castellano

ROSA CASTELLANO
I’m holding a blank page all the time for myself. That’s a truth that I choose to believe in: the blank page is a tool for our collective liberation. It can be how we keep going. I love that we can find each other on the page and heal each other, too. So, I invoke that again and again, for myself, because I need it.