Poems by Bei Dao

BEI DAO AND MODERN CHINESE POETRY

Modern Chinese poetry, which is written in vernacular Chinese rather than classical Chinese, became a literary genre only after the May Fourth Movement in 1919. Almost 80 years later, this genre has now matured in the sense that it has an agreed form of free form, and rules of no rules. Just like contemporary poetry in all societies, modern Chinese poetry is only appreciated by a handful of genuine literature aficionados. Yet, despite of the limited audience, there is never a shortage of poets on either side of the Taiwan Strait.

In fact, poets in mainland China, just as avant-garde artists there, often pose political problems for the authorities. The free spirit and iconoclastic vision that one finds in the works of a true poet inevitably clash with the intolerant and dogmatic control of the Chinese Communists. Some poets' works were banned, their movement closely watched. For example, in October 1990, poets from Beijing, Nanjing, Shanghai, and Hangzhou traveled to Mt. Huang (in Anhui province) for an independent literary journey. Even though there was nothing political about this gathering, the authorities still kept an eye on it, and termed it "the Mt. Huang Incident." (The source of this information is a Chinese literary journal published in Cambridge, MA., called Qingxiang [Tendency]. At the back of every issue, "Tendency" includes a list of underground literary journals in China, as well as a chronology of recent happenings in the artistic world there - both of which are not to be found elsewhere. The magazine is supposedly a quarterly; however, due to the shortage of funding, it now has a very precarious existence. The editor is Bei Ling.) 

After June 4th, 1989, some of the top poets went into exile in Western countries. The most famous of them all is Bei Dao (literally, "northern island"), whose real name is ZHAO Zhenkai. In 1994, Bei Dao tried to return to Beijing to visit his family, but was held in detention at the Beijing airport. For hours the authorities questioned him about the associations between his literary magazine "Today" and the overseas branch of the democratic movement. Afterwards, he was deported back to the U.S., where he currently resides. Bei Dao never got a chance to see his family, who were all waiting for him at the airport. 

Bei Dao has been considered a hopeful for the Nobel literary award nominee - the only Chinese writer who has acquired such worldwide attention at this point. For the poet, however, this attention has been a burden. Every year when the time comes for the announcement of the Nobel literary award, Bei Dao stops answering the phone in order to maintain some peace and quiet.

A fine poet he definitely is, but Bei Dao is not necessarily the greatest of contemporary Chinese writers. As a matter of fact, not a single Chinese writer can claim this status. The fact that Bei Dao is the only one under the spotlight is really a result of the West's general disinterest in the Chinese literary world. Many good writers on both sides of the Strait have been ignored. 

Nevertheless, Bei Dao's poetry is definitely worth reading. His concerns are grand - fatherland, civilization, history , and the alienation from all these are the constant subjects of his poetic imagination. His controlled emotion is expressed through sentences that are simple syntactically, but extraordinarily imaginative in terms of diction. The exact meanings of his poems are difficult to pinpoint, and yet, it is the overall beauty of the allusions that touches the heart. As the poet himself would recommend, try not to read Bei Dao's poems as those written by a dissident or the greatest poet from China, but just by a poet, an artist of language. 

Works by Bei Dao translated into English:


The August Sleepwalker. Trans. by Bonnie S. McDougall. New York: New Directions, 1991.
Old Snow: Poems. Trans. by Bonnie S. McDougall and Chen Maiping. New York: New Directions, 1991.
Forms of Distance. Trans. by David Hinton. New York: New Directions, 1994.

Quiet and Tremble

Translated by the author with the assistance of Chen Yan Bing and Diana Jaio


you are drawing yourself
being born--light's rising
turning the paper-night

madness that you released
is quiet cast by truth
pride shines as if internal wounds
darken all the words

in secret trembling
those angels in uniforms
of a private school
become fish, querying sea

a wind reads ruts
saluting the blue silk beyond
pain

An Unfamiliar Beach
--to P.

1
The sails have been lowered.

A winter forest of masts
contains unexpected sights and sounds of Spring.

2
The ruins of a lighthouse
still hold the great beams from the past.

You lean on the remaining stairs,
on the rusted banisters,
beating the same rhythm over and over.

3
In the dignity of high noon
our shadows look for temporary lodging.

All over the place
salt rock glistens, condensed and
sparkling with memories.

4
In the distance
there is a vast, white expanse.

The blue horizon
is like a moving deck.
How many nets have been cast?

5
A scarf,
like a red bird,
waves over the Sea of Japan.
It flings its imitation of fire
at this grey end of the world,
and at your fixed gaze.
An absence of storms is fine,
but there is also no direction and no wind.
Perhaps in answer to a call,
its wings thrum like a bowstring.

6
The ebbing tide
wave after wave,
spills on a golden carpet,
spills a night suffused with foam,
a lost rope, a broken oar.

Fishermen bend their naked backs
and repair the temple the storm collapsed.

7
Children chase a crescent moon.

A sea gull flies right for you,
but doesnt light on your outstretched hand.

translated by Gordon T. Osing and De-An Wu Swihart

The Boat with a Red Sail

If the ruins of the walls are all about,
how shall I insist
the only road is the one we're on?
Are you fooled into believing
the streetlights that fill the eyes
come out nightly like stars?

I won't deceive you anymore,
won't let your heart, like a trembling maple leaf,
be written all over with lies about Spring.
I can't comfort you anymore
because, after heaven and earth,
only time witnesses to our existence.

On the beach, where sands are pulverized darkness,
when the spray runs off our eye-lashes,
we see the sea behind it is boundless.
Still, however I want to say,
wait, girl,
wait for the boat with a red sail, that brings the wind.

translated by Gordon T. Osing and De-An Wu Swihart

An Ancient Temple

The long ago songs of a bell
weaved this spider web; in the column's crevices,
grown outward, one sees annual rings there for the counting.
No memories are here; stones
that merely scattered the echoes in this mountain valley,
have no memories.
That little path, even, by-passed it;
its dragons and strange birds are gone.
They took with them the silent bells that hung from the eaves.
They took the unrecorded legends of the place, too.
The words on the walls are all worn clean and torn.
Maybe if it caught on fire
one could read the words on the inside.
See the annual growths of the wild grasses,
so indifferent.
They don't care if they submit to any master,
to the shoes of the old monks,
or to the winds, either.
Out front the sky is held up by a broken stone tablet.
Still, led by the gaze of some living person,
the tortoise may revive and
come out carrying his heavy secret,
crawl right out there on the temple's threshold.

translated by Gordon T. Osing and De-An Wu Swihart

Answers

Cruelty is the ID pass of the cruel,
honesty the grave stone of the honest.
Look, in the sky plated gold,
crooked reflections of all the dead float around.

The glacial epoch is over,
so why is there ice everywhere?
Good Hope was rounded a long time ago,
so where are these thousands of boats racing on the Dead Sea?

I came into this world
with only blank pages, rope and my fingers;
therefore, before final judgements are given,
I need to speak in all the voices of the defendants.

Just let me say, world,
I--don't--believe!
If a thousand challengers are under your feet
count me as challenger one-thousand-and-one.

I don't believe the sky is always blue;
I don't believe it was thunder echoing;
I don't believe all dreaming is false;
I don't believe the dead cannot bring judgement.

If the sea is doomed someday to break its levees
my heart must flood with all the bitter waters.
If the land is destined to form the hills again,
let real human beings learn to choose the higher ground.

The latest, favorable turnings, the twinkling stars
studding the naked sky,
are pictographs five-thousand years old.
They are the eyes of the future staring at us now.

translated by Gordon T. Osing and De-An Wu Swihart

We

lost souls and scattered spirits
holdings lanterns chase spring

scars shimmer, cups revolve
light's being created
look at that enchanting moment
a thief steals into a post office
letters cry out

nails o nails
the lyrics never change
firewood huddles together
searching for an audience to listen
searching for the heart of winter
river's end
a boatman awaiting boundless twilight

there must be some one to rewrite love

translated by David Hinton

Outsider

one generation drops like a curtain
the next is applauding

the lifetime you've known
hiding in dark places
starts gaining attention
groping, hence light
letting half a life empty out
and fill with crane song

someone's swimming in sickness
as autumn wind inspects
the small temperaments of young animals
the road joins sleep
and in radiant light that's defeated you
you stand fast at the nameless fence

translated by David Hinton

On The Wrong Road

days gone-by rail against
the moment's flower
night that does youth proud
tumbles hugging stones
breaking glass in dreams

why linger on here?
mid-life letters circulate
vast sorrows
shoes of certainty pour out
sand, or schemes

completely unprepared
I walk further out
in some statement at a conference
tracing the twist in a preposition
joining ghosts
on the wrong road to greet sunset

translated by David Hinton

Requiem (for victims of June Fourth)

Not the living but the dead
under the doomsday-purple sky
go in groups
suffering guides forward suffering
at the end of hatred is hatred
the spring has run dry, the conflagration stretches unbroken
the road back is even further away

Not gods but the children
amid the clashing of helmets
say their prayers
mothers breed light
darkness breathes mothers
the stone rolls, the clock runs backwards
the eclipse of the sun has already taken place

Not your bodies but your souls
shall share a common birthday every year
you are all the same age
love has founded for the dead
an everlasting alliance
you embrace each other closely 
in the massive register of deaths

Trs. Bonnie McDougall and Chen Maiping.

The Double-Side Mirror

We've seen in the mirror
things from a distant past:
a forest of steles, the surviving legs
of desks that were set on fire
and undried ink marks in the sky

The noise comes from the other side of the mirror

The upward path of the future
is a gigantic slippery slide
after knowing delirious joy
from the sage's position
we are born from the mirror

And stay here forever watching
the things from a distant past

Trs. Bonnie McDougall and Chen Maiping.

The Letter

where are you
where is the straight of roses
where is the path through the fire
where is the peak that forgets its oath
where is the pear
whose body shuts like a clam
where is the pre-doomsday carnival
where is the flag's victorious star
where is the dense fog's centre
where are you
where are we

Trs. Bonnie McDougall and Chen Maiping