In The Name Of Poetry

Jiang Hao 蒋浩

 

Jiang Hao 蒋浩 is a poet, essayist, editor, and book designer, born in Chongqing in 1972. He has wandered around the country and finally settled on Hainan Island (i.e. South Sea Island). He has published one essay collection and four poetry collections. He won the first place of the Beijing Arts International Poetry Awards in 2014.

 

THE SHAPE OF THE OCEAN

 

Every time you ask about the shape of an ocean
I should bring you two bags of ocean water.
This is ocean’s shape, like a pair of eyes,
or the shape of ocean that eyes have seen. You touch them, as if wiping away
two burning tears, as tears are the ocean’s shape, too, the clarity
springing from the same soul.
Putting the bags together will not
make the ocean wider. They are still fresh,
as if two non-fish will soon swim out.
You sprinkle the water to the sand of flour,
the bread, also, is the shape of the ocean.
Before you slice it with a sharp sail
it leaves, like a departing boat. The plastic bags
left on the table also have the ocean’s shape, flat
with tides retreating from the beaches.
When the real tide goes away
there’s salt left, shaped as the ocean too.
You don’t believe? I should bring you a bag
of water and a bag of sand, the shape of ocean.
You affirm, you deny; then you non-affirm,
and non-deny? Go on and try out yourself,
as this is your shape too. But you say
“I’m only the image of myself.”

 

LITTLE THING
for SL

 

Fly, fly up! I see now
how small you are,
bushes, trees I do not know
are on both sides.
You show me signatures
you collected in summer.
A gray, white road
bathed in daylight,
hid at the foot of a tree
like a little cat, a road
not leading to you or to me.
I count the moles shining
at your waist, one is left
by the reservoir.
Each night the reservoir
counts the fingers
extended by tiny waves,
puts shiny rings on them,
lets latecomers lead them
away like air.
They will wait and wait.
Some stones and dew
I loved are clamoring,
bringing mud from silence.
Sudden lights from
passing trucks
think this is a wasteland.
At dusk we will eat rice
in the mountains, but
not now. It’s safe in the dark.
Fresh Leaves of Grass
decorate the tablecloth
like a bed sheet. In a corner
of a faraway hill, bubbles rest
in a Coca-Cola cup.

 

A PEBBLE

 

The air is clean after a shower,
a pebble at the foot of a tree
also clean, speckled with
rain. Maybe I’ll sit
on it again, for half an hour only,
leaving time for birds, lizards, geckos,
and even squirrels to sit, and watch
the sea, as the pebble gets
rounder, the surface smooth
and glossy like an egg floating
on the fallen leaves
on the white sands. The pebble
is an egg
laid by the tree, waiting
to be hatched, I think. A branch,
tilted and hanging above,
like a young snake creeping
out of its egg,
swings its tiny legs as if
to kick the empty pebble
into the sea. To be hatched?

Translated from the Chinese by Afaa Weaver with Ming Di