AN INTERNATIONAL POETRY JOURNAL IN ENGLISH & CHINESE
Darkening Mirror: New and Selected Poems by Wang Jiaxin
Edited & Translated by Diana Shi & George O’Connell
Published by Tebot Bach
ISBN 978-1-939678-22-5
Table of Contents
Foreword: Robert Hass —1
Introduction: George O’Connell —15
Reversal (1985–1991)
Étude —20
Scorpion —21
Landscape —22
Meeting Rain, Wutai Mountain —23
Empty Canyon —24
The Knife —25
Autumn —26
What Place —27
A Man Splitting Wood for Winter —28
Train Station —29
Stairs —30
Brightness —31
Transformation —32
Varykino Ballad —33
Reversal —36
Darkening Mirror (1992–2003)
Another Landscape —40
Diary —43
London Notes —44
Prague —49
Traveler —50
Forty-Second Summer —51
Eugene, Snow —52
Taking My Son to the Shore —53
The Death of Brodsky —55
Mr. Nabokov —56
Glenn Gould —57
Spring Festival, 1998 —59
August 17th, Rain —62
Frostbite, December 7th —64
Winter Poems —65
Early Youth —69
Cuckoo —76
Notes from the Castle of Solitude —77
Darkening Mirror —82
Tangerines (2004–2008)
Pastoral 86
Tang Xuan Zang in Qiu Ci, 628 AD —87
Under Ayilanishi Snow Mountain —89
The Last Days of Octavio Paz —90
Limitations —91
Simple Autobiography —92
Evening Scene —93
Returning to Shang Yuan Village from Downtown —94
Tangerines —95
Night Train —96
Legend —97
Old Age —98
The Art of Poetry —99
Answering the Dutch Poet Pfeijffer’s “Obscure Poems
Are After All Better Than Those Easy to Read” —100
For Emily Dickinson: A Late Dedication —102
In Upstate New York —103
A Beer with My Son —104
First Snow —105
Mourning a Friend —106
Grapefruit —107
Notes Out of Season (2009–2014)
Gotland’s Dusk —110
Tarkovsky’s Tree —111
Tomas Tranströmer —112
Kumbum Monastery —114
Rewriting an Old Poem —115
Written New Year’s Day —116
Ice Fishing —117
Names of Places —118
Coarse Sand, Fine Sand —119
Island Climate —120
Outer Lingding Island —121
Fishmouth Peninsula —122
Notes Out of Season —124
Oysters —125
Memories of the Future —126
Dawn —127
Biographical Notes —128
Pastoral
On the country roads outside Beijing you’re sure to spot sheep scattered over fields, like unmelted snow or swollen blooms burst open. They cross the road in clumps, the herdsman barking them down a weedy ditch, tripping and tumbling through the dust. I never paid much attention until one afternoon in flurries of snow I nosed close behind a sheep truck, the dark eyes gazing down gentle and quiet, not knowing where they were headed. They turned toward me then, curious as children. I let the car drift back through the thickening curtain of snow and watched them disappear.Transformation
Seasons change overnight, before you know it the wind against your face so cold you turn back in the yard, the buffeting sky impossibly blue. Suddenly you’re old, withered, utterly changed, shuffling through a swirl of fallen leaves. After the night’s storm the cask of the heart, half-empty, sloshes at each step. Yet wind thrills through the season, tearing at the clouds, the sky lofting higher, vaster, always carrying something off, the smallest chink in the rooftiles filling with moans, voicing what was still, urgent, blowing. Few days left. The dead leaves whirl, in the distance parched whispers of the trees, the murmuring human surf, traffic heading in one direction. The wind’s weight finds your bones, in a single night changing everything, snatching up your heart. Hold on tight. It’s time to stand in the wind or surrender.Tangerines
All winter he eats tangerines, sometimes at the table, sometimes on a bus. Sometimes, as he’s eating, snow falls inside the bookcase. Sometimes instead of eating, he simply peels, slowly, as if something lives within. So he eats tangerines all winter, and while eating recalls a novel in which the heroine also brought to the table a dish of tangerines. One kept rolling till the end of the story. But he can’t name the author. He simply eats the tangerine in silence. The peels on his windowsill rise higher. At last an image comes, several tangerines, in childhood, placed near his hospital bed. His mother had found them somewhere. Though his little brother begged one, mother refused. Still, he shared, but neither would eat the last tangerine, which stayed on the night stand. Who knows what became of it? So he eats tangerines all winter, especially on snowy days, gray days. He eats slowly, as if there’s plenty of time, as if he’s devouring darkness. He eats, peels, and when he lifts his head, snow glitters at the window.First Snow
Whatever joy the first snow brought has long subsided. Falling without end across upstate New York, beyond the window snow mantles snow, white fact cancels white fact. Your days fill with snow. For one unaccustomed to boots, just stepping outside is trouble. My wife and son head off for their sweet nap, his bike,“Red Rock-It”, propped at the stoop, half-buried. The washer thrums and spins, the apples on the table at peace, the English-Chinese dictionary at peace. My steps measuring the stillness more silent. A glance toward the snowy hills, distant, veiled.Mourning a Friend
for Yu Hong
What debts your death erased, I’ll pay. Snow falling through a winter afternoon and the wild chrysanthemums of home will look after what love you recovered. In a single moment, your smile has set into a cipher. The overland bus from Manhattan to Hamilton keeps its usual pace, but writing even half a line of elegy escapes me. Down the frozen December road of this far countryOysters
Party’s over. On the seaside table a few oysters left, large, unopened. Heading back in the car, someone says the ones you can’t open taste best. No one laughs or likely considers what it means. At night the surf sounds heavy. Through dark pine woods our car weaves onward. my suitcase tugs and rumbles.