《吐露》

by Ya Shi

在梦中我把那面孔模糊的人

赞美三遍，痛打三遍
醒来身边就聚集了许多俊美的人；
我是粗鲁的，温柔的
当你冲着天边的流云哈哈傻笑着
扭断奔跑的膝盖像扭断
麻雀的脖颈……停歇处
我们追忆曾经盛开的事物
鲜花轻轻掩埋裂开的灵魂

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by Ya Shi

In a dream the man with the indistinct face

I praised him three times, beat on him three times

On waking near me had assembled many beautiful people;

I am coarse, I am tender

when you rush at the horizon’s flowing clouds, giggling like an idiot

twisting your sprinting knee till it snaps like twisting

a sparrow’s neck till it snaps…where we stop

we remember some things that once bloomed

fresh flowers buried shallow in the split-open soul

translated from Chinese by Nick Admussen

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Ya Shi is the author of four collections of poetry and one of prose, including the celebrated collection The Qingcheng Poems and most recently, a special issue of the alternative magazine Blade devoted to his work. He is a winner of the Liu Li’an prize, and has served as the editor of several influential unofficial poetry journals. His work has appeared in English in Poetry International, New Cathay: Contemporary Chinese Poetry, and is forthcoming in the New England Review. A graduate of Beijing University, he currently teaches mathematics at a university near the city of Chengdu.

Nick Admussen is an assistant professor of Chinese literature and culture at Cornell University. He has translated the work of Ya Shi, Zang Di, Genzi, and Liu Xiaobo; his original poetry has appeared in magazines like Fence, Blackbird, and Sou’wester. He blogs on Chinese poetry in American life for the Boston Review; his first book, on contemporary Chinese prose poetry, will be published with the Hawaii University Press.

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Poetry in Translation

《吐露》

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