Ying-Chuan
Two poems translated from the Chinese by Bowen Wang
The Banquet
A new day comes already, the city ushers a new language
Never-appeared rain gear like bats waiting in the dark
You hear? When the taxis swim through the crossing, the unusual noise
sounds like the sea approaching a fallen seaman—
ushers and then farewells, polishing the chill of the low sky across the shore.
Afar. At this moment, the illusion of gazing evanescently
peculiar and sheer, in a riot of color as a meditating banquet, but—
the storm has its virtue of restraint.
What on earth is this voice—ushering
then summoning? Still stinging, chasing, without letting off
any pair of dazed hands that stretch out to the endless darkness?
Aye, the latecomer closing umbrella infinitely slowly:
Only few people, in the first night of bleak rain.
Book of Anti-Prophecy
After a shower a magic cube rises in the station.
Sound twists into sound & sunlight flattens the film of ponding.
The fifth body sent the oxygen cylinders away.
Alpha: the Night Slayer, Captive
of Classical Heroism, gazing into the zenith
through the thick foggy clouds, seduced by destruction.
The blood on the clouds changes teasingly
as if heralding——the wind
which is blowing over sisters’ bare rebars enable
the ruins inside of them to gather waves, transforming into
a brand-new city of Guernica. Alpha——
still life swarms towards your door. Your door,
leaps from the third to the fifth*. Curses of the swans
crush the utensil in your hand. In the station of post-shower,
along the gliding track, the cube unfolds the prophecy in its arms:
“I & I, sit inside
Engulfed by the rumbling white.”
* Translator’s Notes: The third to the fifth, terminology of Rubik’s cube, meaning changes from 3x3x3 level to 5x5x5 level.