被接受的建议
麦克
用柔的力，只对风微笑。
盯着露珠直到它们的眼睁开。
从枝上扭下花，向后折
花瓣象一片弯曲的唇直到它断。
在人群中移动象他们脸旁的空气
止住你的笑声，当他们把你吸入。
教给裸树和冰河你的信条，
向死鸟和血雪讲道
当夏天来时梦想它们的智力。
读书一天
尼古拉
我习惯把我的脑子叫头脑
因为哪个词的意思我都不知道；
我手里满满一手石子
它们棱角的罪被冲走在
河里。我错认他们是小
头脑把脑子象雨下到湿路上，
而别的脑子长在腿和手上，路过
错认我和我的头脑们是献礼
给混凝土埋着的神们，当
世界以钢的目光被重新创造。
我光滑的思想做的就是弄脏
地面直到一位善良的陌生人
清走它们，留给我的责任
是再次掩埋地面直到我死。
Advice Well Taken
Michael Kicey
Apply a tender force, and smile only to the wind.
Stare down the dewdrops until their eyes are open.
Twist the flower from the branch, and bend back
The blossom like a curled lip until it breaks.
Move among the crowd like the air around their faces
And brace your laughter as they draw you in to breathe.
Teach the naked trees and the freezing river your ethics,
Preach to the dead birds and the bloody snow
And dream of their intelligence when summer comes.
One Day's Reading
Nicholas Theisen
I have the habit of calling my brain a mind
as I don’t know the meaning of either word;
I have in my hand a hand full of pebbles
whose jagged sins were washed away in
the river. I mistake them for little
minds raining brains on the wet pavement,
while other brains on legs and hands pass
mistaking me and my minds for offerings
to deities the concrete buried when
the world was made anew in visions of steel.
all my smooth thoughts do is dirty
the ground until some kind stranger
clears them away, leaving me the duty
to bury the ground again until I die.
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10 comments:
My comment in two languages, too--
哈哈哈——不好意思，怎么我觉得Nicholas的诗好笑极了？一定是我没领会高深的内涵吧？哈哈哈哈……（实在忍不住）
Hahaha--I'm sorry, but Nicholas' poem, in both languages, seem really hilarious to me, though I'm sure there must be something profound there? Should be my own problem, isn't it--hahahahh...(more laughing)
Sorry I simply cannot make myself continue if the sound does not flow well--I mean, we Chinese have to read the poem out, right? That is why I did not finish reading either poem (Chinese). Water, go back and read out and make some changes--especially the third line of the second poem. Please! So that I can finish the reading and join the conversation.
xiwen, i liked Nicholas' poem and found it darkly funny too. But it's not until I hear/see your unstoppable laughter did I realize how funny it is. So I laughed again, after you:)
Beauty, I have always appreciated your frankness. Thank you. I will make some changes when I have time. But I have to say that the reason I threw out these poems out in the open was that I was sick of agonizing over the choice between musicality and meaning myself and I hope my friends will help me find the balance. Also, whether poems are meant be read aloud or silently has been a much-debated question for us Chinese too since the beginning of modern Chinese poetry. Breaking the smoothness of flow often gives unexpected twists and turns to the poem. I have to stop before starting to belabor what is obvious. Be patient. It might take me a while before I come back with a revised version:)
sorry about the oversimplied comments on your poems. i was very exhausted when i wrote down those comments and i certainly did not pay attention to the tone. but i did not want to discuss the tension between musciality and meaning. i simply wanted to read these cute little poems. i do not read theories about poetry; i read for fun; this is very personal for me. and i am sorry that you had to take time to write a long response.
but i do sense a bit of frustration in your response. ok, i am not going to pretend that i can shrug my frustration off easily, the frustration generated by the third line of the second poem--I see carelessness, not unexpected twists. correct me if i am wrong. and feel free to laugh at this ridiculous fixation. what can i say? i am a conversative historian.
so now we are even. we frustrate each other, like we always do.
I'm flattered, tho I'll admit I feel a little funny about my poem being translated into a language I don't understand. It's a bit like knowing someone has your face on a dartboard somewhere. Plus I tried every HTML encoding I could and still couldn't even view the characters, which is even more disheartening: my moment of lyric lucidity looks something like ????????,????? / ????,??????,??? / ?????, etc. Alas. I wonder how it sounds. Why didn't you do the whole thing?
Mike, maybe because your western laptop does not have the "simplified Chinese" option. Try one of the campus computers and see whether the question marks disappear. If not, I'd be glad to send you a word doc so you could find a Chinese to read it aloud to you. Or, give me a call and I'll let you hear your Chinese poem:) Oh, I did translate the whole thing, but decided to only show the fragments because I felt uneasy with my translation.
Beauty, relax. I put out the lines for fun, not for serious academic fixation. If you read the English version, you'd understand why there's the "careless" redundancy in the translation. I still haven't found a good way to convey the two different "hands" in Nicholas' third line.
Happy Holiday to you all!
ok
It seems my browser is even more pro-Western and xenophobic than my research interests are (ahem). I tried every 'simplified Chinese' setting and nothing worked. Ho hum.
I realize I'm coming to the game pretty late, but I'd like to add a few comments:
1) I like the third line; I think it's just awkward enough. In reading the English aloud I would probably say "hand full" more like "handful," so perhaps the solution is a slight differentiation for 满满 where the first is said properly with an open vowel but the latter more like the English word "man."
2) My one qualm: lines 7-10 of the English fall just short of being a run-on, so it's important those lines flow into each other in a nearly uncomfortable way where they culminate in the almost tragic sounding "the world was made anew in visions of steel." What you have, Liansu, suffices, and I wish I had some suggestion as to how to improve it.
3) Xiwen, I always skirt the line between the silly and the serious, so finding it funny is not out of line at all.
thanks, nicholas. :) oh, by the way, since your computer could read the chinese, could you help mike to cure the xenophobic of his laptop? i meant to send mike the word doc but never did...ho ho
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