The following poems are from Dimming mirrorTranslation of Wang Jiaxin’s first complete poetry in English. A poet, essayist and literary critic, Jiaxin has published more than forty books, including Chinese translations of Yeats, Tsvetaeva, Mandelstam and Paul Celan. As a poet, he draws inspiration classical Chinese poetry and philosophy, especially the works of Du Fu. The following poems follow Jiaxin’s journeys to various Buddhist holy sites, including Mount Wutai, considered one of the four sacred mountains in Chinese Buddhism and the home of the Bodhisattva Manjushri.
Meeting Rain, Wutai Mountain
After five hundred li dusty road
we passed through a red canyon
as thunder rumbled over the mountain,
the rain is on our heels.
fog rose,
the church on the top of the hill under the shower.
He came so indulgently, luxuriously,
my teeth were chattering.
I remember my parched thirst on the road,
and later the strange wood in the monk’s hand,
rushing in my dreams
running water.
Awake. Last night’s fruit seeds threw him out the window
already beaten into muddy ground.
The rain clears, the trees of the sun,
the rocks, the church is brilliant.
Then a wind chime in the morning,
and beyond the mountain slope,
chanting sutras.
Kumbum Monastery
That mysterious Bo tree
ringed this tower
it has been worshiped for centuries
by those who kiss the earth,
the root emerging from the darkness
fifty meters by the wall,
new flowers in the wind
speak a language
even less do we perceive it.
Tang Xuan in Zang Qiu Ci, 628 AD
life is so bitter
if there is reincarnation,
I want to be a bird
flying across the sky.
He doesn’t walk on the ground
cross the furnace of Tűzhegy,
where sand grinds my teeth
and stones bite my heels.
I collapse several times in a sweat
like a dying camel.
So many devilish scenes. Not just the Bull King
grinning in my dreams, silently chasing
but anonymous scammers,
screw-faced demons
you scare me night after night
prove my holy charge
it entails humiliation.
I wake up to a bleak world
dead mountain,
gravel desert without a single blade of grass.
Above a ruined church, on the jagged rasp of cicadas
more frightening than the roar of tigers,
wolves from childhood.
And so I know whose delegate I should be.
I drag myself westward once more
but there is a figure in front of me
wander like me
press when i stop
in the flame of the absolute south.
If it stops, the sliding dunes will swallow it.
Note: The speaker is Tang Dynasty monk and translator Tang Xuan Zang (602-664 AD), who helped bring Buddhism and its sutras to China. Perpetuated in the classic Chinese novel Journey to the WestHis journey from the ancient capital of Chang’an (Xian) to India was full of arduous adventures. Here he crossed the kingdom of Qiu Ci, an area now known as Kucha or Kuche in Xinjiang Province, where he met the “Bull King” (Niu Mo Wang), a bull-headed demon who controlled the Mountain of Fire, bringing heat and drought to the region.
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From Dimming mirror Translated by Wang Jiaxin, George O’Connell and Diana Shi. Reprinted with permission of the author.
