Late-Night Wine By Ma Yongbo

I rise to take my leave of the tavern keeper,

draining the last darkness from the bottle,

friends melt away all too soon.

The moon, a fledgling loon,

wheels above unseen pools,

fishing out your sallow, bloated mask.

I long to board any random tram bound for the outskirts—

how sweet the urge to breathe damp earth.

Ma Yongbo was born in 1964, Ph.D, representative of Chinese avant-garde poetry, and a leading scholar in Anglo-American poetry. He is the founder of Difficult writing and objectified poetics. He is also the first translator to introduce American postmodern poetry into Chinese.

He has published over eighty original works and translations since 1986 included 9 poetry collections.He focused on translating and teaching Anglo-American poetry and prose including the work of Dickinson, Whitman, Stevens, Pound, Amy Lowell,Williams, Ashbery and Rosanna Warren. His complete translation of Moby Dick has sold over 600,000 copies. He teaches at Nanjing University of Science and Technology. 

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