
Poetry in Our Time
ZHANG Zhi [China]
The Mirror Image of Ghost City
Everything begins from mystery
And ends in mystery
Now, the Russian ashes
Has filled
The Gulag Archipelago
In the mirror
In 1996
A bookseller of Chongqing
Has photocopied
The Gulag Archipelago
From me
(Published by the Mass Publishing House in 1982
For restricted circulation
With printing number of 1000)
And has paid me
Six thousand yuan as remuneration
(Whether or not it has been published
There is no knowing)
Six thousand yuan twenty-two years ago
Is tantamount to one hundred thousand yuan
Nowadays
Which means
The great Russian writer
Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Has presented me one hundred thousand yuan
Unconsciously
Now
I am still buried in the ghost city
Between the lines
Continue to search for the Gulag Archipelago
Coffin lids fill the capital
How many pates are to be cracked?
August 12, 2018
A Leaf Has Kept out All the Winds
Someday
For something
A hot quarrel
Happens
Between my wife
And me
“Don’t quarrel
You are married
And you should love each other”
My three-year son
Who is doodling
Suddenly says
My wife and I
Face to face … wordless
A leaf has kept out all the winds
January 8, 2014
Fraudulent Claims for Compensation
History runs
Under the wheel of history itself
Ouch!
A shriek
Is merely the conjecture by you
August 13, 2018
Parody of Alexander Solzhenitsyn
We know
They are doing evil
And they know
They are doing evil
They know that
We know they are doing evil
We also know that
They know that we know that
They are doing evil
But still they are doing evil
February 7, 2020
(Translated by ZHANG Zhizhong)
About the author:
ZHANG Zhi, born in Phoenix Town of Baxian County, Sichuan province in 1965, is an important poet, critic and translator in contemporary China. His pen name is Diablo, English name is Arthur ZHANG, and ancestral place is Nan’an of Chongqing City. He is a doctor of literature. He is the current president of the International Poetry Translation and Research Centre, executive editor of Rendition of International Poetry Quarterly (multilingual), editor-in-chief of the English edition of World Poetry Yearbook. He began to publish his literary and translation works since 1986. Some of his literary works have been translated into more than thirty foreign languages. He has ever won poetry prizes from Greece, Brazil, America, Israel, France, India, Italy, Austria, Lebanon, Macedonia, Kosovo, and Japan. His main works include poetry collections such as RECEITA (Portuguese-English-Chinese), SELECTED POEMS OF DIABLO (English), POETRY BY ZHANG ZHI (German-English-Portuguese), Selected Poems of Diablo (Chinese-English), A Jigsaw Picture of the World (Albanian), خُصْلةٌ مِنْ شَعْرٍ عَلَىْ وَرَق (Arabic), collection of poetry criticism entitled Series Essays on Avant-Garde Chinese Poets, and poetry translation A & 1 IS THE FOUNDER, etc.. In addition, he has edited Selected Poems of Contemporary International Poets (English-Chinese), Selected New Chinese Poems of 20th Century (Chinese-English), A Dictionary of Contemporary International Poets (multilingual), Chinese-English Textbook 300 New Chinese Poems (1917—2012), and Century-Old Classics·300 New Chinese Poems (1917-2016), etc.
YIORGOS CHOULIARAS
( Reprint from old kritya issues)
REFUGEES
On the other side
of the photograph I write to remind myself
not where and when but who
I am not in the photograph
They left us nothing
to take with us
Only this photograph
If you turn it over you will see me
Is that you in the photograph, they ask me
I don’t know what to tell you
Translated by David Mason & the author
SEVERAL SHORT POEMS
LOVE POEM
The curtains were raving in the air
Translated by David Mason & the author
[From the sequence The Hidden Appearances]
*
THE ACCIDENT
I work in a factory that makes poems. One day, on the job,
my right hand is crushed between two enormous pencils.
Translated by David Mason & the author
[From the sequence The Facts]
*
THE OLDEST PROFESSION
Death is a whore
who takes everyone
Translated by David Mason & the author
[From the sequence Secrets of the Trade]
HISTORIES
Still pursued by very ancient stories
from place to place through the streets
going up staircases and ringing
bells that cover up the shouts
of those being tortured not to reveal
the confidentiality of correspondence
on which postage seals bleed
having poured sealing wax on their lips
these offspring of the tribe of mail-carriers
who are restlessly engaged in this relay
of a hand to hand single letter
going round the world to reach
its recipient who is also the sender
before landscapes on stamps
have time to change seasons
Translated by David Mason & the author
[From Letter]
is a Greek poet, essayist, prose writer, and translator. In 2014, he was awarded an Academy of Athens prize for innovative writing and for his work in its entirety. His poetry in translation has been published in leading periodicals and anthologies, such as Harvard Review, The Iowa Review, Ploughshares, Poetry, World Literature Today, and Modern European Poets, and in Bulgaria, Croatia, France, Italy, Japan, Lithuania, Sweden, and Turkey among other countries. Born in Thessaloniki, he studied and worked mostly in New York, before returning to Athens from Dublin. He has worked as a university lecturer, advisor to cultural institutions, correspondent, and press counselor at Greek diplomatic missions. He has been elected President of the Hellenic Authors’ Society, the principal association of literary writers in Greece.
Kelley Jean White
( Reprint again kritya)
Six True Things About Water
1.
my father was on a destroyer in the South Pacific
he remembered a great storm, the small boat
an acorn in a rocky pool
stirred by an angry child,
the men clinging
to her sides like bugs on a windshield
wiper, the roar
a locomotive in an bank vault
after my father retired he had time, he could spend
hours
in the town library with books
on World War II and naval history
he thought he had identified the storm
he read me a chapter
there is nothing to compare it to
2.
my father’s best friend on the ship was a boy
from Milwaukee
he had never seen the ocean
he could not swim
when they crossed the equator they had a certain
initiation
they were thrown from the ship, had to make
it to a ladder
my father tried to take his friend’s place
it was forbidden
the boy drowned
after my father retired he had time, he could spend
hours
sorting through the tiny
brown edged pictures
there was the Chief Petty Officer crowned
as King Neptune
there was his friend laughing
he tried
but he could not remember that boy’s name
3.
my father knew at least 100 trout streams
once he rolled his canoe over
while he dried out by the fire he counted
the trout flies
on his hat band, 47,
on his vest, 218,
in his tackle box 808
when he bailed out his little boat he counted
47 buckets
after my father retired he had time, he could spend
hours
counting,
my mother didn’t want to hear the numbers,
things didn’t add up
my father always wanted to run the inland
waterway
he wanted to camp along Skyline drive
hike the Appalachian trail
after my father retired he had time, he could spend
hours
planning the trips
4.
money was tight
he sold his little boat,
his little silver
travel trailer,
gave me the tent
I’ve driven Skyline drive
it was beautiful above the Shenandoah River
It was terrifying
my father never drank anything but water,
milk
and orange juice
occasionally a beer
but never before sunset
after my father retired he had time, he could spend
hours
sitting with his fishing buddies
but he never drank hard liquor
he didn’t drink coffee
never had a donut in his life
and men never talk
there is no need to speak by a waterfall
5.
my father taught himself about fish,
about rainbow trout,
brook trout,
brown, and
landlocked salmon
after my father retired he had time, he could spend
hours
researching the biology
of insect hatches,
the lateral line,
the visual system of fish
his legs gave out
he couldn’t hike into the best streams
Trout Unlimited brought in an expert
from Boston
who thought he knew more
than my father
6.
my father drank
from a colored only fountain in Alabama
he stayed innocent
he never learned to curse
in the South, in 1947, he gave his seat
to a Black soldier on a bus
he did not believe in divorce
he never thought you’d leave me
after my father retired he had time, he could spend
hours
worrying about me,
worrying about my children
watching me cry for months
he raised his fist to you
he didn’t believe in violence
he taught me never to hate anyone
he was seventy-three
he didn’t want to live with my failure
didn’t want to watch love
drift into despair
Pediatrician Kelley White has worked in inner city Philadelphia and rural New Hampshire. Her poems have appeared in Exquisite Corpse, Rattle and JAMA. Her recent books are TOXIC ENVIRONMENT (Boston Poet Press) and TWO BIRDS IN FLAME (Beech River Books.) She received a 2008 Pennsylvania Council on the Arts grant.