Jidi Majia [China]

     

 The Responsibilities of a Poet 

They say what poets should do,
like internet or television celebrities:
attracting more attention than entertainment celebrities,
or changing the voice of others
into your own voice,
and becoming someone else's mouthpiece.
They say no one can understand
poems by poets
(It is said Li Shangyin
had a similar experience.
This type of dispute still rattles on).
They say
not many people read poetry.
In the past, were there really a lot of people who read poetry?
Was it a majority
within the minority,
or was it the remaining part
within the overall majority?
In reality, poetry is always searching
for a few
kindred spirits
From Qu Yuan to Shakespeare
from Rilke
to Cavafy,
the crystallization of words cast
a sky that belonged to them.
These lonely stars
illuminate us.
Poetry is the soul's murmuring,
but it must also bear
the risks of upholding justice.
If a poet's responsibility
forgets to create new possibilities in language,
forgets life
and sorrow,
and loses the self--
if this comes to pass,
without a doubt, it declares
the death of poetry.
 
(Translated by Denis Mair)
 
 

Searching for a Tribal Poet
                                                for Yevgeny Yevtushenko
 
We are not agile muntjac
in the forest, like a ray of white light
disappearing among the leaves,
hollow as smashed silver.
But the scent it leaves
will let another muntjac
find its strange tracks
and bark out its cheerful mating call.
The lone proud snow leopard
on the gray ridge at dawn
leaps weightlessly,
playing the black and white piano keys.
This is its domain.
Any intruder who passes through
will discover the mark it leaves
and feel
its warning pressing closer,
but in a certain season,
it also goes to search for its brother.
Through their own means,
nearly all animals in this world
can find the tribe they wish to find.
No matter where you are, in the animal's homeland,
the detector that comes from within life
can find a star that belongs to it in another dimension.
Poets' encounters are also like this.
Through the secret code of writing and
the wavebands transmitted by thoughts,
they can find any spiritual comrade
who belongs to their tribe.
Yevtushenko was such a person--
open, sharp, widely experienced.
Regardless of how complex the knowledge was,
it could be confirmed by his outstanding memory.
He was not a poet in his study,
he belonged to town squares, lightning, and crying out;
he belonged to any place he could use his voice
to cover the ocean and storms.
I heard one of his readings. Before walking to the microphone,
he was sitting there
like a lethargic cat.
But when he started to read,
in the center of the crowd you could see a flame
quivering with the radiance of leopard markings.
In that moment, without exception,
we all became captives of his voice.
Oh, no! Even though he longed for his poems
to become part of the lives of the masses,
his meticulousness made gentle spirits
whisper love poems like sighs.
He told me he fell in love with Maria
not because of her eyes or lips,
but because of her unforgettable hands!
Oh, yes! Eastern obscurity and mystery
and Western logic and rationality
in this trailblazer of an age,
the poet Yevtushenko, walking through
the two opposing worlds of the Cold War Era,
his countless facets centrally unified.
The beauty and flaws of human nature
left a distinctive mark on his life,
and this is the reason we accept
he was a true poet who brought us everything
a complex person can.
I say Yevtushenko
is a comrade and brother of our tribe
because, like other animals,
we used the most ancient methods
to find him!
 
(Translated by Denis Mair)
 
 

Author’s Bionote:
 
*Jidi Majia, born in 1961, is a celebrated Yi ethnic poet. He is considered one of the most important voices of contemporary Chinese poetry and one of the main representatives of this ethnic minority. He is former Vice President of the Chinese Writers Association, Director of its Poetry Committee, and Asia Coordinator of the World Poetry Movement. His works translated into 40+ languages, explore ethnic identity and humanity. He has won numerous international awards and organized major global poetry events, bridging Chinese and world literature. He is President of the Qinghai International Poetry Festival.