by Yi Sha
(translated by Denis Mair)
1
I am still alive
I can still move my heavy legs
Up the iron ladder you have erected
To emerge from underground
I can still crack my whip
Mount upon my own horse
And run with the wind
Across this still-living plain.
I still feel my own blood
The same temperature as the soil;
All these little bumps and jostles
Against my umber-colored skin
Have raised scarlet marks
Flecks of hematite.
But when I reach out stiff fingers
To touch growing things on the land
That my heart beats for
In the space of a moment
They are other than they were
2
That grove of tall trees
And amber waves that roll
Through leaves of wheat uplifted
Just a moment ago were holding up
The sun you bowed to in worship;
Now the earth cracked like a tortoise shell
No longer has a throaty sigh of rivers,
Green mountains suddenly gone desolate
No longer are wreathed in clouds.
Could it be my arrival
Has cast a pall on things? Will my spirit’s light
Forever be dimmed?
Eagerly you await your visitor from outer space
Outfitted in his brand-new armor.
His glitter only outdoes me
Because of all that extracted metal.
3
Two thousand years
I stood deep in absorption, underground
Two thousand years
Blind despite my staring eyes.
We were dressed and ready for ages
But marching orders never came.
Meanwhile the sky darkened.
After so long the light greets my eyes
What campaign can we set off on?
What rebels to suppress?
I live
Because of one emperor’s death
I die
Because another emperor lives
In this ever-prolonged dynasty
This chain of reigns that will not die.
4
I am in solitude
Standing in these vast ranks
Like a single wheat blade
Standing on the plain
Where the sun shines for everyone.
Our tender green arms
Lift it over the earth, above heavenly powers.
At dusk each day the setting sun
Drops into each lone heart,
To wait in darkness is our despair,
We sleepwalk here and there
Desires like new bamboo in spring
Are parting their sheaths,
Yet we stay in formation
Our martial deportment never lax
You can see we have kept it up
Doing drills in our dreams.
Now the light greets me again
First I mistook magnesium lamps for sunlight,
My eyes are blinded.
5
Under the piercing glare
I am faint and nauseous.
Amid a group of muted voices
I hold back words, keep silent.
You who descend from me, if I
Am only a clay figure of arrogance
Standing at one of your leisure spots
Serving as one of your symbols,
Please send me into exile,
Exile an old soldier who still has a taste for rice
To garrison a border district,
At least I’ll be the image of a sentry
Otherwise why don’t you
Bury me all over again?
6
Who was it
Who chopped off my head?
In broad daylight
Stuck on a price tag, put it up for sale
Now I realize
The meaning of my ancientness.
In these new times
It robs my heart of hope
Right when my head was severed
Surely you must have heard
My parting cry to the grassland
To my battle horse and long whip
To my roundness like the sun’s.
7
I bend my body down
In search of my skull
I fall over with a rumble
Transforming to a heap of yellow earth.
An aching silence all around
Who is that strumming
“AMBUSH ON ALL SIDES”?
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