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.
