[In the fall of 1979, I was sent to
Mainland China for three months to conduct research on the current status of
foreign literature in the PRC. Sights, scenes, and sentiments garnered during
that trip inspired me to write a sequence of poems in Dutch that were later
published in the literary magazine De
gids and still later as part of my first book of poems, Ikonen bij daglicht, which was published
in Amsterdam by Querido in 1982.
In fall 2019, I finally made the
following English translations, followed in some cases by background notes.
As always, to emphasize that poetry
should not be bound by the actualities of public time, I transcribe Chinese
place-names not by the contemporary Hanyu
pinyin system but using the older established English spellings.]
Hail
Peking
It can happen so suddenly:
a skyful of stones
arisen from water.
Did it come from lakes in the South,
deserts to westward? Seek no explanation
on earth: where we are now
is reality. Look:
every human here
wears a mask. Calm, patient,
far above the crossings
of the Ten Thousand Streets stands
one white bus dead still.
(On ‘Hail’)
In
strophe 3, the ‘masks’ were suggested by the sight of denizens of Peking
wearing white masks to shield their noses, mouths, and throats against the
combination of winter cold and the dust or coal particles in the ambient air.
In
the last strophe, there is a slight technical echo of classical Chinese poetry,
in which ‘parallelism’ is a standard structuring device. An element which has
already been mentioned is ‘paralleled’ by a following term which is either
similar or opposite to it in some respect. In this case, ‘Ten Thousand’ – in
itself a parody of translations from Chinese in which it actually just means
‘numberless’ – is contrasted with ‘one.’ The inveterate seeker for
significances might note that in this case there is only ‘one’ bus covering
‘ten thousand’ streets – an image of scarcity (?).
Peasant
baby
Chengtu
The white-haired androgyne who’ll be
your grandparent
already has teeth.
For you it’s still to come:
breathing, crying,
knowledge as to Coca-Cola, Sony,
and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.
Take it slow: a lifetime. These days
are here to stay.
The androgyne beyond all years,
standing on the threshold
toothbrush in hand
clears her throat on a swig of morning
sun,
spits on her own shadow.
(On ‘Peasant baby’)
Such
‘Western’ or ‘capitalist’ things as Coca-Cola or Sony were new-fangled in the
China of 1979 in which I as a traveler got the inspiration for these poems.
They had to be fitted in somehow with the continuing orthodoxy of the
Dictatorship of the Proletariat.
In
the fourth strophe, the androgyne stands ‘toothbrush in hand’ because she is
one of the many people one could see early in the morning brushing their teeth
outdoors, typically with a metal or pottery mug in the other hand.
The
last two lines could be taken to imply that the androgyne, who is already
‘beyond all years,’ stands above the come-and-go of worldly politics. To her,
the ‘morning sun’ is not Mao Zedong, whom a popular slogan called ‘the reddest
red sun in our hearts,’ but just something to clear her throat on.
Earthquake
Peking
When the ground uprises
it looks as if the threshold
was lowered.
Make no mistake: what peels off
is paint: the walls
stay standing.
It is true
that the light has lifted:
grass still grows only
on the driest roofs,
and the only remaining green
is a garbage can.
(On ‘Earthquake’)
In
Peking one could indeed see grass, at least a few blades of it, growing on
roofs. It had rooted in the windblown soil that had found its way up there.
For me personally, this harked back to
THE poem which had first turned me on to modern Chinese poetry – Bian Zhilin’s
‘Grass on the Wall’, which I had first read in Kai-yu Hsu’s
translation.
The relevant lines (from Hsu's Twentieth Century Chinese Poetry, p. 165) were
Just think, there are people who spend all their days
Dreaming a little and watching the wall a little,
While the grass on the wall turns tall and then yellow.
In Peking in 1979, garbage cans were green.
The relevant lines (from Hsu's Twentieth Century Chinese Poetry, p. 165) were
Just think, there are people who spend all their days
Dreaming a little and watching the wall a little,
While the grass on the wall turns tall and then yellow.
In Peking in 1979, garbage cans were green.
To
the ferry-pilot girl
Hangchow
How many centuries have you waited
to bring me to the other side
this afternoon?
I, who just this autumn
became for you a foreigner
to see you –
we’re off! Lift that apple-red
scarf a little higher: cover your cheeks
or I’ll see your lips.
O wield that rudder slowly –
lest all too soon the shadow line
of yonder shore be clear, be merely
willows.
The
Altar of the Moon
Peking
The Altar of the Moon
is a clump of old men
playing chess.
Now the last goddess
has been driven out, all the gates
are open. There’s even
a sun: pale, still learning,
helped out here and there
by leaves on autumn trees.
Unseen women
shuffle, drag long brooms,
watch the ground before them.
No man will live here long enough
to make new moves:
every one on feet of stone already,
pinned in place securely
by the long-as-ever nails
of a banished maiden.
Pumpkin
soup
Peking
‘An army marches on its stomach’; dream
trucks
slide across the bottom
of a bowl of boiling water.
And the girl by the roadside
watches: herself in Army dress,
the unpaved intersection. September
by sunlight: pumpkin time,
silent as a full truck
lurching, raising dust, smelling
sweet...
There they come, the bearers:
the unbelievable procession of real
children,
each carrying a bowl in both hands.
(On ‘Pumpkin soup’)
‘An
army marches on its stomach’ is a famous dictum by the Prussian general and
military theorist Carl von Clausewitz (1780-1831). In other words, success in
warfare depends on being able to solve homely logistic problems like keeping
the troops fed.
In
1979 when I was in China, women and girls still regularly wore military-style
uniforms.
Summer
Palace
Peking
Here, in olden times
they built a whole Palace
from the scent of cinnamon –
sharp? heady? ‘Pluck a few leaves...’
Walk along the pond. See
locked pavilions, lotus leaves
beyond imagining. No Buddha
is watching you. ‘Rubbing these,
the Essence emerges...’ Or are you really hungry?
(Hiding under grey hair
the girlfriend of someone’s youth is
selling
sweet, lukewarm buns.)
Go ahead, try standing in line
with thousands of living beings,
all with bowl-shaped hands.
‘Thus, o Monks,
was all that had once been desired
called into being.’
(On ‘Summer Palace’)
The
parts in quotation marks form a sub-text in the style of English translations
of Buddhist scriptures.
In
China in 1979, because I could speak Chinese I was allowed to roam the cities
alone, and had at least the illusion that my movements were not being
monitored. In other words, not even a Buddha was watching me.
