年岁 / Age
Hanxue Jiang (translation by Dingzhong Ding)
“After a long journey, recognizable still.”
This is false: ghosts travel a thousand miles.
So we imagine losing
The time of our skulls perusing a dictionary
Made of mirrors behind a vacant
Name putting down a dagger as a bookmark
(How long until we become perishable
Until we, in an instance, pass through the Underside)
You look for water in water I, sand in sand
On the skin of conifers tally the pins of snow
Into an expired field sow a night and a constellation of stars
A wish made on a path shrouded by the hereafter:
Let pomegranate flowers sleep in paper caskets
Let Qinghai Lake cross a bridge of salt
On the staircase sleeps a horse we never mounted
In the drawer stands a boat we never boarded
A promise slimmed into a page of legends
We stagnate then return
To the river’s beginning; in the same story
Your ghost is fresh I borrow a knife and a life
In the paralipsis of the wild sail through like wind
“长路归来焉能识。”
这是假的：鬼行千里。
于是我们幻想失去
头颅的时间 翻阅镜子
制成的字典 在不存在的
名字后面 放下一枚匕首的书签
（多久之后我们才能易析
才能瞬间走过世界的反面）
你自水间觅水 我于沙中寻沙
在松柏的皮肤上 清点雪的针脚
在死亡的田里 耕种夜晚和星群
在被来年覆盖的道路上许愿：
让石榴花睡进纸的棺
让青海湖走过盐的桥
楼梯上睡着我们没有骑上的马
抽屉里站着我们没有坐上的船
约定窄成一纸传奇
我们留在原地 再次踏入
河流的原点；同一个故事里
你的鬼魂清新 我借来刀和生命
在原野的省叙里 如风穿行
Hanxue Jiang is from China and is currently studying creative writing at The College. She writes poems and short stories in Chinese and English. She is the winner of UChicago’s Ron Offen Poetry Prize series for 2024 and 00s Poets Society’s 2023 International Bilingual Poetry Prize.
Dingzhong Ding is a writer from Shanghai, China. An alumnus of the Iowa Young Writers' Studio, he focuses on poetry and sometimes meddles in translation work. He is interested in second-language acquisition and East Asian diaspora culture. Though he rarely writes any, he serves as editor-in-chief for a local creative non-fiction journal, Living Chronicles.