Zhang Zhi [China]

 

Cemetery on the Southern Mountain
 
Without the so-called drizzle
Which begins to drizzle suddenly
To remind me
Again it is time
To be close to father
 
The name on the tombstone
Has become indistinct
Perhaps my old
Eyesight is dim
To fondle with my hands
The concave name
Which seems to be still warm …
 
Father —
In this small
Space of less than one square foot
Has been living for 13 years
Oh, father
Are you used to
The other parallel world
Which appears in my dream
From time to time?
 
A tombstone
Has separated us
But
From the bottom of my heart
— Dad —
Has the calling startled
The blue bird in heaven
The wind in the tomb yard
The ghost underground …
 
 
The Doomsday
 
These years
You peddle yourself to the world
Like a politician
More like an old hand in love affairs
 
These years
You and the world flatter one another
Like a pair of actors
More like a pair of gays
 
Oh, these years
You sleep together with the world
But you have known nothing about the world
Oh, these years
The Aeolian bells in heaven are like a drunkard
Limping along the tunnel of time
 
 
A Sonnet of Nocturne
 
Please open at the page of rock that weighs
And read that on which written is Death Light
Their past wombs dark fruits refuse to retrace
The land of bump harvest should be in plight!
 
Although the bones are smashed the soul remains,
Burnished are scripts and breasts of the Most High
Fin-de-siecle fierce rains as girls’ first monthlies
Flashes of blood fast brighten the cold sky
Long is our misery but short our cheers,
Charred fingers stretch towards Witch’s granary
Tonight, the world’s an orphan without tears,
But the graveyard of Desire lights brightly
In crows’ pupils skeletons lightly dance
Like child whore men and beasts’ chorus’ll all lance?
 
 
Author’s Bionote:
 
*Zhang Zhi (pen name is Diablo, English name is Arthur Zhang), was born in Phoenix Town of Baxian County, Sichuan Province in 1965, is an important poet, critic, translator and publisher in contemporary China. He is a doctor of literature. He is the current editor-in-chief of “Rendition of International Poetry Quarterly” (multilingual), editor-in-chief of the English edition of “World Poetry Yearbook”, and advisor to the Center for Globalization of Chinese Poetry of Nankai University. He has published seven collections of poetry in foreign languages, translated eight collections of poetry and a full-length novel. His literary works have been translated into over fifty different foreign languages. He has won literary awards from over thirty countries. He now resides in Chongqing City.