A Whole Afternoon of Terror  

Before dusk arrives, skeletal horses

loom outside the darkness, lingering off the road.

I encounter ghosts in the mirror,

the wind sniffs beneath fallen leaves, through a door-crack,

scenting the faint glow of flesh revealed.

Axes, slingshots, cleavers all line the window sill painted blue,

even my stiff six-year-old elbows bear the grain of wood.

The yard’s pale wooden gate is locked, the door to the cottage too,

I stare at every tremble of the wooden gate

and the passing sound of the whistling poplar trees.

Mother hasn’t returned yet, I don’t know how many years

how many winters have passed, I hear the door handle softly turning,

the quiet voices of family members, and the slow movement of a golden lamp.

But I can’t wake up, can’t bolt that door wrapped in a sack.

A Near-Forgotten Craft 

Destruction is space, allowing new horrors to emerge

yellowed pages can no longer be turned

invisible ghosts make you cough incessantly

the painted landscape keeps shrinking

until real places become indistinguishable:

a century-old iron bridge as dark as a bagpipe

now creaks like a knee by the water’s edge.

Punish life by writing everything down

let the sunset hover forever in a still cave.

As long as this book is opened once

everyone will be resurrected, the precise machinery of hell

will start again, with wild winds, hail, and flames

with the asphalt stiffening their joints, the suffering of others continues

unbeknown to anyone.

Reliant on the reader’s sympathy and testimony

time continues like dashed lines in the snow.

Snow falls, falling forever,

yet never falling on the bent heads of pedestrians

always walking in the same place, never avoiding a snowfall.

Few believe in these kinds of games anymore.

Perhaps it’s just a harmless game

which offers us the image of time

like a watchmaker with weak eyesight in his workshop,

where metal parts and various-sized gears reflect the dusk light

through the carved glass revolving door, candlelight, flickers

at the door, an unidentified white horse appears

snorting with contempt, carrying the decay of generations.

Encounter with a Cat on Midnight Streets

You lay sprawled in the centre of the street, eyes half-open.

Poor little thing, what happened to you?

Your gaze seems to ask me, what is life?

I had just returned from a meeting discussing the meaning of life,

drunk on wine because life is so beautiful,

though the discussion was dull, led by zombies.

I never expected to meet you like this,

“Death” lying on the path I, “Life,” must take.

As if questioning me, unknown death, how to understand life.

The midnight street suddenly falls silent, and I hesitate for a moment,

thinking to find a branch to move your flattened body to the roadside,

where passing cars will crush it repeatedly,

until your emaciated pain is swept away by the sun’s custodian,

or it becomes a golden beehive, dripping with blood honey.

But in the end, I did nothing, exchanging a meaningful gaze with you.

I turn away, like a soul leaving its shell.

“Here”

“Here” is a signpost, not really here,  

the earth beneath your feet is a vertical, transparent void,  

you can only recognize here by its “non-existence”.  

You’re familiar with these signs, a street, a road,the house behind houses,  

a date, a name, the sound of poplar leaves brushing each other,  

and songs from the last century playing on a radio hanging from a branch.  

You can no longer make out their lyrics,  

as if they’ve been encrypted at the far end of time,  

that’s fine—no words to smudge this perfect balm,  

no other you, old, young, or in between,  

walking out of this maze of “here”,

to watch a sunset elsewhere,  

or see another autumn rain falling in another realm,  

another of you, nose buried in a colour-blurred map,  

collar wore the wrong way round, searching for a “here” you’ve been before.

Ma Yongbo was born in 1964, Ph.D, Since 1986 He has published over eighty original works and translations. He is a professor in the Faculty of Arts and Literature, Nanjing University of Science and Technology. His studies center around Chinese and Western modern poetics, post-modern literature, and eco-criticism. His translations from English include works by Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Ezra Pound, Wallace Stevens, W.C.Williams, John Ashbery, Henry James, Herman Melville, May Sarton and others.