AUDIO OF THE DAY: Yang Lians Darknesses (trans. Brian Holton) bit.ly/1neknIu DARKNESSES 1 green leaves always forgotten when windows are too green like every pebble roughly thrown by spring hitting spring itself birds still wearing arid skates of blue though old dog eyes are tired out no need to translate the riverbank’s slapping the aesthetics of death incite the swarming of the flowers fields alone can tolerate the furious heart fleeing still further April sniffs out blood in sunlight the wood crouches behind us knowledge that can’t be taken away it takes away the dead reciting a poem a deepened stillness the other world is still this world darkness would say 2 a storyless person escapes into a day with a gesture of escaping from the day a pastless person has passed away seagulls worked into an abstract book by the evening locked in the isolation ward who isn’t crazy delusions more like fragments than flesh fragments of glass shattering skeleton heard on the periphery fragments of rotting tongue twilight washes away, just washes away rats squeal shrill squeals as light stamps on itself each day startled awake by each day with one black night a personless story still won’t come true told twice darkness would say 3 each shower of rain makes you sit at your end rain rapping on the roof tiny animal steps move you motionlessly into the darkness in motionless weather you need others to sleep to sleep is to leave the world of the rainy season leaves once darkness has passed through you like a thoroughbred through the fire hear inside you silvery white stitches everywhere stitching a worn-out windcheater of flesh every shower falls only on this bare ground when you begin reading from your end a page of black explanation unweariedly swaps someone else for next day forges an address the graveyard street still muddier finds fault with this hand beggars huddle together in mutual hatred making a city with nowhere to shelter from the rain a flock of soaking crows collides inside you breeds different crimes with identical faces darkness would say 4 but darkness didn’t say a thing between dark and dark only this spring kite’s bones hang in the treetops bark shines lovers pass kissing under the tree pollen in the lungs beating last years gong a bright red clown always makes children run wild greener and greener the teeth that chew little hands old newspaper lawn hands over scissors of flame so April sees the river flow like a mirage the current’s forgotten colours see us as mirages once the dove’s call is burned black all the stars are broken toys stuffed in a pitch-black floodgate in darkness theres always a body drifting back to the place of no dreaming even we fear only fear our own terror darkness doesn’t say a thing every walker on the streets starts muttering to himself darkness is listening to the orange-red darkness of lipstick a spring school always makes us ignorant memory who lives in it is a ghost but sickness attenuates the look when a mirror’s worn on the face the ocean digests a dead fish being vomited is still endless chatter darknesses are too many for life ever to have got there spring walks out of us only then is spring silent at last © Translation: 1999, Brian Holton From: Where the Sea Stands Still Publisher: Wellsweep Press, London, 1999
Posted on: Sun, 12 Oct 2014 08:00:39 +0000