The following verse is reprinted from it The best literary translations from 2026, an anthology of poetry and prose from around the world. Edited by American poet Arthur Sze, the collection contains thirty-two works of poetry, fiction, and non-fiction translated into English from twenty-one languages, including works by the author. Kim Hyesoon, Yuki Tanakaand Chen Yuhong.
***
(I often think of it)
I often remember
that evening
by the stream
when I was drunk
and he didn’t know
the way home.
I got bored and
I returned to my boat;
it was already dark.
I drifted involuntarily
and I found myself deep
among the lotus flowers.
So, me
rowed and
rowed
and startled
boom team
into flight.
Translator’s note
This poem is a 词 (ci), which is a form of lyric poetry that reached its literary and artistic peak during the Song Dynasty. Simply put, it’s rewritten lyrics. Each word follows the prosody of a particular song. However, the original tunes have been lost to time. We recognize the patterns and identify the words that follow the same song, but we no longer know how they are sung. Because of the differences between English and Chinese, and the poem’s lost melody, I translated the poem from the perspective of a modern reader—focusing on the imagery of the poem’s stupor and the sound of the poem as it is read. This poem also has a 诗眼, the eye of the poem. It is a poetic term coined by the literary titan of the Song Dynasty, Su Shi, and refers to a line or phrase that imbues a poem with a sense of life, a phenomenon of the soul.诗眼 is similar to Roland Barthes on the punctum in photography. The “eye” of this poem lies in the last stanza – in that sudden burst of movement, in flight, which contrasts with the dreamlike mood of the previously published stanzas. But does this burst of movement startle the poet or lead him to a deeper sleep? The poet’s answer, it seems, is confidently ambiguous. In translating the poem, I tried to fully translate the presence of this “eye” by carefully placing the verb “shocked” and by clustering the fricatives “in flock” and “in flight” close together.
♦
From The best literary translations of 2026edited by Noh Anothai, Wendy Call, Öykü Tekten, Kọ́lá Túbọ̀sún, and Arthur Sze. Reprinted with permission of the translator and publisher.
