We are pleased to present the second installment of our two-part feature on New Poetry from China, translated by Stephen Haven and Li Yongyi. Click on the titles below to view bilingual editions of new poetry by Yang Jian, Mo Fei, and Li Yongyi.
Translated by DENIS HIRSON
Go to meet redness.
Reach it with all the necessary brutality.
Refuse facile images. Self-portraits. Portraits of any sort.
But go without reserve, crushing water underfoot, unyielding to the childlike pleasure of splashes against naked legs.
Go as a painter.
Roll up trouser legs, remove espadrilles and dig your will into the torrent: meet the red there, take it captive. Bury your madness in the icy water.
Without dying of this.
Without speaking of it either.
By ZHENG MIN
Translated by STEPHEN HAVEN and LI YONGYI
Inside my body there is a gaping mouth,
A lion roaring
Rushing to the end of the bridge,
As the ship glides by.
By YU NU
Translated by STEPHEN HAVEN and LI YONGYI
Morning air pumped off, cannabis-induced despondency
Replaced him and her. Far away, his ball-playing days,
His cap floating on the river, his soft tissues
Like severed seaweeds. This happened in 1976.
By LI YONGYI
Translated by STEPHEN HAVEN and LI YONGYI
Spiritual territory divided by Israel and Rome,
Capitol, the eagle and the military
Turned English into Latin, your ark of covenant
Lurking in “Old Europe” and exceptionalism.
By TANG DANHONG
Translated by STEPHEN HAVEN and LI YONGYI
You might have been my brother, especially at dawn
Milky vapors rise into the sky,
That white adolescence wafting into my lungs.
By MO FEI
Translated by STEPHEN HAVEN and LI YONGYI
By YANG JIAN
Translated by STEPHEN HAVEN and LI YONGYI
They said:
“Tear off the erhu strings,
Smash its body.”
We ended up without music.
The year is 1972. Tony Durán, a Puerto Rican-born adventurer and professional gambler from New Jersey, is found dead in his hotel room soon after arriving in a small town in Buenos Aires Province with a leather bag full of dollars. Dark-skinned, he spoke Spanish with a Caribbean accent. Rumors of his ménage à trois with Ada and Sofía Belladona, twin daughters of a prominent local landowner, have scandalized the town. Inspector Croce investigates.
So begins Argentine writer Ricardo Piglia’s fourth novel, Target in the Night, as detective fiction. Who killed Tony Durán and why? A gambling plot, the love triangle? Could one of the Belladona sisters have soured on the tripartite arrangement? My next guess: Racism? Durán is “a mulatto who shows up in a place where the last black people had disappeared—or dispersed until they blended completely into the landscape—fifty years earlier.”
Don’t miss an issue! Subscribe to The Common.