Tree and Covenant by Yongbo Ma

 

Image | Lukas Rodriguez

Tree and Covenant

All winter, the camphor trees tuck fragrance beneath their armpits

while dusty osmanthus holds back its green.

Only when bare plane trees sprout yellow shoots,

veiling their withered brown cones,

do they wipe countless palms clean on dark green aprons,

adorn their hair with crimson buds, awaiting the birds’ pecks—

The more they’re pecked, the faster leaves unfurl.

These trees obey distant stars’ decrees:

Grow leaves on schedule, wither on time.

They trust wind still sweeps the earth,

the cosmic wheel turns, the Lord’s covenant endures.

Thus, after plum blossoms, forsythia’s tiny yellow bells swing,

magnolias—night phantoms towering overhead—

scatter their big white petals in circles around trunks,

while Southern Magnolias still sneer at neighbors,

fingering shadows beneath bronze-leafed backs.

Begonias flash pink undergarments,

mimosa trees’ golden lashes yet to sprout—

they remain virgins, cherry trees, a blizzard of pale snow,

delaying certain things' arrival,

letting sparrows’ feathers fluff fuller,

patterns on the turtle-dove’s back sharpen daily.

At night, those trees sink into monk-like contemplation,

motionless, having reached another threshold,

then flames flicker within trunks.

On such nights, someone always calls me beneath the trees

his face is always half light and half dark.

© Yongbo Ma

Yongbo Ma

Yongbo Ma was born in 1964. He has a PhD and is a translator, editor, and leading scholar of postmodern poetry. He has authored or translated more than 80 published books. Ma is a professor in the Faculty of Arts and Literature at Nanjing University of Science and Technology. His translations from English include works by Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Ezra Pound, Wallace Stevens, W.C.Williams, John Ashbery, Herman Melville, and others. You can follow him on Facebook. https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100093276516900.

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