Song Lin
trans. by Dong Li
Two POEMS
Autumn Whispers
Lesser Khingan meanders, toward Russia
autumn gives me a teaspoonful of honey that I take back
to the woods to hoard in cornflowers’ memory—
why does a black bear cub teeter and totter?
Dripping clouds tear at the tent of the autumn circus,
gongs and drums rumble all the way from Wuying to Manchuria.
Dear Quietude, the net you weave could be used as sacrifice.
Dear Oroqens, what has sliced open your fish clothes?
A tiger avoids us and returns to its soft habitat.
Insect noise coronates it, in the golden sunset palace.
When does the resin cement into blue amber
in the compost, in the conical coal seam
until it glitters around your neck?
Pine needles turn left and right, the hooks of hairy bidens
ambush a reckless shadow.
The lake gramophone broadcasts a lullaby to a vole
but it does not want to sleep, it peels down the husk and
gnaws on the corn with its sharp teeth like a clumsy happy recluse.
For love, the transparent inner wings of a grasshopper unfold
and beat like rain on the fine veins of a leaf.
I stop, I listen, I cross the spiders’ traps
in the woods, the person I want to visit has not yet returned.
Heavy pine cones that hang outside the window grace the branches.
A bronze horse pendant from the Jin dynasty hangs on the door.
I shake the bell, I startle the sika deer,
I scare away a flight of thrushes greedy on magnolia vine berries.
Dear dead moths, like a letter after a summer letter stuck
on the glass shade that still seems to push inward.
No one can call back that “snap” of sacrifice,
that farewell of a “snap,” doesn’t it ever hurt?
A Walk Down Montmartre
Fog feels like a fever. Under neon lights
a stumbling drunkard holds an electric post
as if holding an angel, pouring out his heart.
I walk down the grey hill of Montmartre.
The windmill of Moulin Rouge slants on Paris sky,
beer glasses brim with foam. By night’s edge,
a cat dreams of a Daliesque surrealistic painting:
the moon sniffs at creamed strawberries on the serving plate.
The carnivalistic fatal swing of the flesh.
Whirlwinds of saxophone and Tarantella sisters,
crystal shoes on a spell endlessly spin.
There in the telephone booth, a lady cries out.
After a sad expatriate party,
I want to sleep! Let wine, this green gloomy spirit,
escort me till the end of a night adrift, a drenched night.
I walk down the grey hill of Montmartre.
Tell me, old man gleaning in the trash,
on which street, around which glittering corner,
do I see you again, a figure in the verse of Baudelaire,
whose empty glance would destroy the world?
Song Lin is one of the most distinguished and unusual poets from China. Among his honors are Rotterdam, Romanian, Hong Kong Poetry Night International Poetry Fellowships as well as the Shanghai Literature Prize. He has held residencies at OMI Ledig House translation lab and Vermont Studio Center
Dong Li was born and raised in P.R. China. He is an English-language poet and translates from Chinese, English, and German. He’s the recipient of a PEN/Heim Translation Grant and fellowships from Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Akademie Schloss Solitude, Ledig House Translation Lab, Henry Luce Foundation/Vermont Studio Center, Yaddo, and elsewhere.