Postcard: Chinatown, c. 1958. Creative Commons, this work is marked as being in the public domain.
Translating Translating Yu Jian*
A Styrofoam Cooler by the Side of the Road
[Style-you fool-skin-clay Xie-Shaobo you-young]
Wild beside the pale UK making trump a circus
large creep down Tao lines. clear distinct from the river and sky
“circulating” and “in the city” all background
red-painted glitters apparently the poet’s hand
A C J and K like Po-left spring melons
represent everything later down in the marsh
I didn’t read some before when the horses pass in front of
perhaps Spokane or Black Mountain the bonds I admit abandoned me
before this my ice was as blue as the rain
flowering a text fine the word a state sun already blown
the core age behind in a Red Army cart “tightly sealed”
a Third Way of gifts tying bands having fit Mei
by the Tongzhou-Bolinas freeway my condition is scree served by a racist
like in a pure prosaic in Poetry Warhol’s hot tour
arriviste lit a bar near Kunming
I admit later on it’s only a styrofoam cooler
*Yu Jian is a contemporary Chinese poet from Yunan. This is a trans-trans of his 1993 poem “Tie-lu. fu-jin-de. yi-dui. you-tong.” “A Stack of Gas Cans by the Railroad.” English trans. Simon Patton?
