Poems on China in 1979 from 'Icons by Daylight'

[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.

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.