The stream leaves huge boulders on the shallows, pale grey like skulls.
We sit facing downstream, tucked in a mountain hollow.
Behind us the grass grows taller and denser,
tall enough to hide our feet, to hide tangled roots within it.
Once, across the stream we could pass wine cups and strawberries,
pass the shadow of trees, pass a single yellow leaf newly shed from last autumn.
With a light touch upon the water, we too sent the tremors from upstream
all the way downriver, through pebbles and dark mud on the riverbed,
to the soft bank, the willows along the bank, the wings resting on the willow branches.
We turn our backs on the source,
on the high mountains beyond the source, the dwelling place of clouds.
We know not what drifts over from behind us.
We have forgotten the path we came by.
Facing away from the future, we sit quiet and still,
waiting for the breath of widening waters drifting from afar,
waiting for the whole world to swirl past us and flow downstream.
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.
https://www.facebook.com/yongbo.ma.2025/
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