Four Poems of Zhao Si

Children

They disappeared swiftly

without a trace. Coiling waves, whirled-away time,

each a spinning vortex, soft curling locks of hair,

bright smiles.

Acres and acres vanished before 

they were dim reflections of stars on the Earth.

Cherubim who borrow the first appearance of the soul,

the quantum fluctuations of their iridescent wings;

stars, too distant from the Earth,

reflections wavering.

Coils and coils, whirled away time, soft angels,

reflections of stars vanished in a blink.

 Sighs

  for all the slaughtered victims

I hear, I hear the flock of rain, crowing, rushing out of stirred crowds,

a deluge of chaos and fright, laughing, roars of laughter

crashing into the Wailing Wall. Triumphant karma holds a sharp blade

in its mouth and slices the sigh into pieces; one piece, two pieces,

feathers flutter, dancing. You emerge among the whirling sleet.

What is beyond mortal imagination arises – 

the appointed time has come  –

the sky shatters into snowflakes.

I see, I see the suffering, the dukha of your heart, as it swells up, up

until an angel thunders out; he flexes the roots

of his dark, unfamiliar wings, pressing against the cyclone

from an emptiness in the heart, then bows his head to peck

an immense, petrified world with his sharp beak. Already stone,

you, an enormous sigh, stand upright but burn inside.

A fire wall, a wall of fire burns darkly and damply, smoking

palely and bitterly, collapses, buries, buries the eternal sighs.

  Home

 for Bruno Schultz

You are something I’ve never seen before but love innately,

out of a drifting black forest, a town of bursting light

warm, dazzling, beyond any limits.

A thread of passion

runs through me, suspended behind

a huge cobwebbed soul, shining with inexpressible connections

woven by each street built on a need to belong

in the night breezes of April, a three-sided blade

of smells, listening

to lofty phantoms, a déjà vu of foreign kinsfolk

who, for generations, lived in these streets;

they rise up one after another

until high above they are, like high-noon suns,

cast heavy thought-shadows on a place with nowhere to hide.

  In a Flash of Lightning

All day, I’ve dipped into the fantastic moment,

sunshine dismissed, all things clean and crystal,

leaves like green feathers, sunlight, clouds of white roses

blooming one after another.

I’ve walked on the street as if walking on the bow of the world’s ship,

the tranquility spreading in the parting of the rippling wind,

reflected in the azure infinity lake of my heart.

Yet an unknown sound arises, terse,

out of a giant mirrored face – its withy outline opens,

purity settles in its shiny and silvery depth.

Myriads of changes evaded, reserved and restrained,

fold in on themselves

before suddenly vanishing.

In the silence of waiting, a pearl-coloured silence,

love brands itself into the world, extends its tentacles, and I hear

a crisp, tinny hatching sound –

the vital force of life walking away from its dusty dwelling,

step by step toward reality. Have you parched land,

lodged in the same dream with me, heard it too?

In a flash of lightning, I awaken first,

shedding my spring nectar with raindrops for you.

    Translation: Bruce Meyer with Xuan Yuan & Tim Lilburn

    From In a Flash of Lightening, 2022, Exile Editions, Canada

Zhao Si (b. 1972), Chinese poet, essayist, translator, poetics scholar, editor, is the author or translator of more than a dozen books, including: White Crow (Poems, 2005); Gold-in-Sand Picker (Prose Poems, 2005); Disappearing, Recalling: 2009–2014 New Selected Poems (Zmiznutia a návraty, Bratislava, 2018); and In a Flash of Lightning: 54 Poems of Cosmic Vision. Translations include: The Threshold of the Sand: Complete Poems of Edmond Jabès; A Night with Hamlet by Vladimír Holan; and Crow, Season Songs by Ted Hughes. Zhao Si lives in Beijing.