Brief bio sketch

Lloyd Haft (1946- ) was born in Sheboygan, Wisconsin USA and lived as a boy in Wisconsin, Louisiana and Kansas. In 1968 he graduated from Harvard College and went to Leiden, The Netherlands for graduate study in Chinese (M. A. 1973, Ph. D. 1981). From 1973 to 2004 he taught Chinese language and literature, mostly poetry, at Leiden. His sinological publications include Pien Chih-lin: A Study in Modern Chinese Poetry (1983/2011; published in Chinese translation as 发现卞之琳: 一位西方学者的探索之旅 in 2010) and A Guide to Chinese Literature (with Wilt Idema, 1997). His liberal modern Dutch reading of Laozi's Daode jing was published as Lau-tze's vele wegen by Synthese in September 2017. His newest books in English are translations: Herman Gorter: Selected Poems (Arimei Books, 2021), Zhou Mengdie: 41 Poems (Azoth Books, 2022), and Totally White Room (Poems by Gerrit Kouwenaar, Holland Park Press, 2023). He has translated extensively into English from the Dutch of Herman Gorter, Gerrit Kouwenaar, and Willem Hussem, and from the Chinese of various poets including Lo Fu, Yang Lingye, Bian Zhilin and Zhou Mengdie.



Since the 1980s he has also been active as a poet writing in Dutch and English. He was awarded the Jan Campert Prize for his 1993 bilingual volume Atlantis and the Ida Gerhardt Prize for his 2003 Dutch free-verse readings of the Psalms (republished by Uitgeverij Vesuvius in 2011). His newest books of poetry in Dutch are Intocht (Introit) and Beluisteringen (Soundings), published by Uitgeverij Van Warven in November 2023.



After early retirement in 2004, for a number of years Lloyd Haft spent much of his time in Taiwan with his wife Katie Su. In June 2019 he was named a Distinguished Alumnus of National Taiwan Normal University. In addition to writing and translating, his interests include Song-dynasty philosophy and tai chi. For many years he sang in the choir of a Roman Catholic church of the Eastern Rite in The Hague.



Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Yang Lingye 羊令野: Two Poems



Two Poems by Yang Lingye
translated by Lloyd Haft[1]


(1)   To Accompany the Ink-Wash Painting “Looking for the Plum Blossom in a Dream”

like a gentle sleeve
still bearing traces of snow
exuding a fragrance of last night’s wine
scattered flower shadows
printed with waves of subtle scent:
who disturbed them
and splashed them on a scroll of floating ink?

on far-off Orphan Hill
the man who calls the cranes his only children
has wandered off and not yet returned
leaving the cold of countless trees
for the mountain gods who keep lonely vigil
and can that sentimental poet He Xun
go back now, South of the River
and lie dead drunk in the Eastern Pavilion?

at dreamland’s boundary no doubt
the path is blocked by clouds
ask the pines the bamboos
what it is they’re surrounding
a sudden shiver
and the body that awakens is arrayed
in snow nor blossom


(2)   Melting Away

clouds drifting by overhead
the swimmer in the human sea has lost all bearings
just flotsam floating east west as it goes
knowing no end of the ocean
        boundary of sky

what remains is a lone body
robed in common cloth
keening along with the wind
now and then imprinted by flying dust
with memories of another day
like commas marking lines
of an unread dynastic history

the throat of a beggar in the market place
though hoarse with long thirst
keeps loyally crying
in diminished rhythms
a blurred final phrase

why did they melt away
the names written in snowflakes
every cold brush-stroke
a prototype of sculpted ice
and even the thumping heart has turned
to a puddle



[1] First published in Renditions No. 39 (Spring 1993), pp. 108-109.
For other poems by Yang Lingye, see the January 2013 archive on this blog.