Retrospect by Yongbo Ma

 

cottonbro studio

Retrospect  

I seem to wake from a thousand dreams,  

each one containing a real me, a real story, 

all converging like a sudden snowfall 

rising from the plain’s farthest edge,  

slipping from unseen, vast robes,  

whirling and whispering around me,

rising and falling, eager to tell me of those

dreamt events which fade with my waking.  

The woman who crowned my forehead with a kiss, 

I can't tell if she is my mother or my lover

I seem a red dove clutching poppies, plunging into

her embrace, or maybe I am the only cracked red

pomegranate that she can bring back from the light

to the netherworld, or the faint shadow on

her blue velvet gown when she was lost in thought.

These real stories seem to have nothing to do with me,  

they are but phantoms, beseeching me to summon them

into vision like sunlight imprinting on soft wax,  

this makes me lonely, I have spent many lives 

for many people, for many unfamiliar selves of mine

I learned languages not to speak to anyone,  

but to turn fiction into reality, reality into fiction,  

life is a dream, and that is not terrifying,

what is truly terrifying is that it is real.  

I ask myself: do you believe you do not exist?  

the answer comes from the shadows circling me—  

“your existence is only because you will cease to exist.”  

They answer as they recede, darting and peering

through endless colonnades, shifting doors,  

laughing and weaving in and out, for a long time, 

counting their winnings from the game.  

These are the shattered fragments from the colossus

that entombed me, they are at once roses and poppies,  

encircling a grand lily like a whirlwind’s amphitheater

or a more poignant image: a child sleeping on the

rooftop, awakened by the first drop of rain from the stars,  

rubbing his eyelids, trembling from the fiery dream.

© Yongbo Ma

Yongbo Ma

Ma Yongbo was born in 1964, holds a Ph.D., is a representative of Chinese avant-garde poetry, and is a leading scholar in Anglo-American poetry. He is the founder of polyphonic writing and objectified poetics. He is also the first translator to introduce British and American postmodern poetry into Chinese.

He has published over eighty original works and translations since 1986 included 9 poetry collections. He focused on translating and teaching Anglo-American poetry and prose, including the work of Dickinson, Whitman, Stevens, Pound, Amy Lowell, Williams, and Ashbery. He published a complete translation of Moby Dick, which has sold over 600,000 copies. The Collected Poems of Ma Yongbo (four volumes, Eastern Publishing Centre, 2024), comprising 1178 poems, celebrates 40 years of writing poetry.

Follow Feed the Holy