Plague Poems, VIII: "First Thing"

"First Thing"


When the virus rolled in,
I developed the habit of checking,
upon my grudging return
to consciousness each morning,
to see if I was dying.

Fever? Nope.
Sore throat? Maybe, since I
haven't kicked cigarettes.
Shortness of breath?
No, but if yes, see above.

I'm no longer checking my
AM vital signs first thing;
the heartbeat's horizon,
the imminence of non-return,
is everywhere now.



4.25.20

Plague Poems, VII: "Limited"

"Limited"

Quarantine and its attendant attempts
to put pen to paper, to say something
about anything,
reveals, repeatedly,
a smallness of soul, the tightness
of the heart's fibers.

There is no shame or
self-pity in this;
man is a limited creature.
Words fail, concepts decohere,
emotion is quickly and
thoroughly spent.

So let meaning be evasive and
feelings half-formed, clumsily voiced.
See being for what it is,
or seems to be in this sealed-off world:
contingent, halting, interlaced,
somehow endless.

4.18.20

Plague Poems, VI: "Condensation"

"Condensation"

streetlamps bore holes
into my eyes

neighbor's voice loud
but hardly clear

Hamish the cat
perambulates

the night: condensed

Plague Poems/Poemas da peste, V: "Na rua"

Segue abaixo um poema meu escrito em português neste tempo de peste. Peço desculpa pela minha falta de domínio dessa língua, mas espero que você, caro/a leitor/a, possa tirar alguma coisa significativa do poema.


"Na rua"


Sempre ouvi dizer que
em tempos de peste
não há ninguém na rua,
que a vida cotidiana
dos peões acaba subitamente,
como caísse um véu de luto
em todas as casas
e os seus habitantes
teria ficar dentro,
chorando e rezando
para o mundo como era
antes da peste
ou o mundo vindouro.

Mas parece-me que
não ouvi bem,
visto que vejo na rua
as multidões, armadas
com cães, bebês,
bicicletas, telemóveis,
sacos de comida, cervejas,
com máscara, sem máscara,
os rostos coloridos
com preocupação,
alegria, resignação,
falta de atenção,
medo meio disfarçado.

Não se engane, pá,
sou parte, pelo menos
às vezes, dessas multidões,
de bicicleta ou a pé,
fazendo compras semanais,
a vigiar o comportamento
dos vizinhos,
de saco cheio com as paredes
que estão a
aproximar-se de mim,
desejoso de viver,
apesar dos riscos,
na rua.


8 de abril 2020

Plague Poems, IV: "Big Questions"

"Big Questions"


The latest sci-fi book club
movie pick was Coherence. It
more than met the minimum requirement
of giving us something to talk about
while we're locked away in
our houses and apartments,
peering into one screen to discuss
what we saw on another
(or maybe the same one).

We like big sci-fi questions, philosophical
what-ifs. We got plenty:
Schrödinger's cat. Comet hysteria.
The multiverse.
How to deal with an alternate-reality you.

Watching other universes multiply
and collide gave us the chance to
flex atrophied social muscles,
talk to someone other than ourselves
or our cats or significant others.

The big questions remained satisfyingly
unanswered when we said goodbye,
took off headphones, closed laptops.

Now we get to figure out how sci-fi
those questions are
when fictional universes collapse
and we're left with concrete,
minimal-dimensional quarantine space,
inhabited by just one version of
each of us.


4.7.20

Plague Poems, III: "Sprouting"

"Sprouting"

undisturbed weeks
indirect sunlight
ambient moisture
force of vegetal will:

sweet potato
may soon become
plural.


4.3.20

Plague Poems, II: "Timekeeping"

"Timekeeping"


The 6:10 alarm on my phone held out
longer than expected, and only got
turned off last week.

I haven't been wearing my watch regularly
for a while; no reason for that
to change. Keep on ticking on your own, Timex.

Schedules are toast. Being somewhere
when the hour and minute hands say so
is over. Time is dead—

until you realize that well, shit,
you can't point out its absence
without being in its presence.

Might as well keep an eye on the clock
a little longer, I guess. After all,
there's another Zoom call coming up.


4.3.20

Plague Poems, I: "Two Guests"

Since society is slowly reconfiguring itself in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, I figured I'd write some poems about life under (quasi-)quarantine. I hope everyone is staying safe, being smart, and keeping their distance from other people. Now's a good time to catch up on your reading.


"Two Guests"

Two guests recently arrived
in the wake of a
halfhearted winter:

The plague feasts upon the
banquet laid out for it
in human lungs,
ignoring its terrified hosts'
screams of panic or denial.

The Cooper's hawk perches in the
live oak, picking off doves and
starlings, laughing its
staccato, taunting laugh,
boasting to its future mate.



3.31.20

"Rufando apressando" por Camilo Pessanha

Boa tarde, leitores. As societies and economies begin to unravel in the wake of the pandemic sweeping the globe, I'm having a hard time wrapping my mind around the enormity of the situation. I don't think I can, really, as it seems pretty clear that the effects of COVID-19 will be felt for years, and in the three months that it's been spreading things have already changed greatly, so who knows what things will be like a year from now.

Like a lot of folks, adjusting to a considerably circumscribed existence is proving to be more difficult than I imagined, but so far it's not too bad. It's hard to get motivated to work on translating projects, knowing that most of them will probably languish, unpublished, in the years to come, but it beats doing nothing. Among the writers I'm translating is (as always) Camilo Pessanha, as the title of this post should make clear. I did the first draft of this in 2018, I think, and polished it up a little earlier today.

I was inspired to do so by Tashiro Kaoru, a Japanese pianist based in Belgium, who first wrote me in late 2018 due to our shared interest in Pessanha's work. We've been corresponding ever since, and she's working on translating Clepsidra into Japanese. Now and then she asks for suggestions regarding the poems, and I help as best I can. Today was one of those days, and when I remembered I'd already translated this, I decided to post it here.

Enjoy, stay home if you can and away from other people if you can't, and remember: we'll only get through this together.

D.A.S.

-----

Rufando apressado,
E bamboleado,
Boné posto ao lado,

Garboso, o tambor
Avança em redor
Do campo de amor...

Com força, soldado!
A passo dobrado!
Bem bamboleado!

Amores te bafejem.
Que as moças te beijem.
Que os moços te invejem.

Mas ai, ó soldado!
Ó triste alienado!
Por mais exaltado

Que o toque reclame,
Ninguém que te chame...
Ninguém que te ame...


-----



Beating rapidly,
And swaying,
Cap to the side,

Dashing, the drum
Advances all around
The field of love...

Strength, soldier!
Double-time!
More swagger!

Lovers will smile upon you.
Girls will kiss you.
Boys will envy you.

But woe, oh soldier!
Oh sad, alienated one!
No matter how ardently

The bell makes its claim,
Nobody calls to you...
Nobody loves you...

司空圖的"沈著" / Sikong Tu's "Deep in Thought"

I've started working with a friend in Brazil, who's also into Chinese poetry, on translating the 二十四詩品 Twenty-Four Kinds of Poetry, a work attributed to 司空圖 Sikong Tu, into Portuguese. I don't know much about Sikong Tu, and it seems like there's not a lot known about him in the first place, even among Chinese sources. He does have one of the few two-character surnames in China, which is cool.

The only English translation of his work that I've found is by Herbert Giles—yeah, that Giles—and while it's a product of its time, it's nice having it for comparison. Anyway, I figured I'd share my rough English version of the fourth poem in the series. In the future I'll add more, though I'll probably hold off on the Portuguese versions until Paulo and I figure out what the hell we're gonna do with them.

Enjoy!

微臣
史大偉

-----

沈著
司空圖

綠杉野屋，落日氣清
脫巾獨步，時聞鳥聲
鴻雁不來，之子遠行
所思不遠，若為平生
海風碧雲，夜渚月明
如有佳語，大河前橫


-----

"Deep in Thought"
Sikong Tu

In the space between green firs, sunset and clear weather
Head bare, walking alone, when I heard the sound of birds
The geese have not arrived, and she is far away
My thoughts bring her closer, as they have all my life
Blue-green clouds on the sea breeze, bright moon on nighttime islets
You speak fine words, the Yellow River before you running west to east

News from the Southern Front

Sorry for the long absence, folks. The holidays were pretty relaxed, but 2020 is shaping up to be a busy year. I'm talking to a couple publishers about my translation of Súria, Vimala Devi's first book of poems. I'd like to get it into print ASAP, since Vimala is 88 and Súria has been out of print for ages. (I won't publish it without the original Portuguese text.) The book about 18th-century nuns in Goa I've been working on with a colleague since 2017 is about to get turned in, and Routledge should be putting it out later this year. More info on that when I have it. I'll be doing some editing work for a colleague in Portugal, and I'll be translating a book of poetry from Mozambican writer Virgílio de Lemos, too.

But wait, there's more! An old friend and I aim to work together on a comic book, something we've wanted to do since we were ten years old and drawing/writing weird shit that he still has, safe in sound in that same fifth grade Trapper Keeper. I've got another writing project—actual writing, not just translating—that I've been tapping away at now and then, and with any luck I'll make the time to bang out the rest of it and see if any publishers bite. Oh, and I'm working with a friend in Brazil on translating Tang dynasty poet 司空圖 Sikong Tu's 二十四詩品 Twenty-Four Kinds of Poetry into Portuguese.

Add to this all the DSA and related political shit I've been and will be doing for the foreseeable future, and you're looking at a corpse with his hands full. It's cool, though. I've got the new Yuri Gagarin album, The Outskirts of Reality, to provide a soundtrack, the mind-blowingly excellent game Disco Elysium to play when I need a break, and plenty of books to read. I'll survive.

Take it easy, dudes. I'll be back soon with, well, I don't know. Something!

Oito Elegias Chinesas de Camilo Pessanha, VIII: 邊貢的“幽寂”

This is the last of the eight Chinese elegies translated by Camilo Pessanha. As I think I noted early on in my leisurely study of these translations, The copy of China: Estudos e Traduções I draw the text from has mismatched the original Chinese with Pessanha's versions. This poem usually gets listed as #7.

邊貢 Bian Gong was, like everyone else whose work has appeared among the elegias chinesas, a Ming dynasty poet. An official in the Ministry of Revenue, he was also one of the 前七子 Seven Former Masters along with 李夢陽 Li Mengyang, author of the last poem, and a proponent of old-style writing. (Shocking, I know.)

In this final poem, I find myself reiterating the same points I've been making about Pessanha's translation skills: nothing leaps out at me as being overly obtuse or plain wrong; I wish I knew why he made certain choices; his version of the poem is in line with his own aesthetics and the poetics of his time; any claims that Pessanha didn't know Chinese (at least in its written form) are pretty much full of shit; and I always learn something from his translation.

蓬戶 appears in my usual online (modern) Chinese dictionary as "thatched cottage" or "humble abode," but I went with the solitude theme and envisioned it as a run-down place out in the middle of nowhere. These sorts of dwellings appear fairly frequently in Chinese poetry, but I doubt that all of them were quite as decrepit as their inhabitants liked to portray them. Think more "nicely furnished little getaway" than "tumbledown hut."

吟 is both reciting/chanting, and a song, i.e., a poem. Pessanha translates 懷舊吟 as "the remembrance of friendly voices," which I get—懷舊 is "nostalgia"—but again, going with the image of this poet's solitude, I imagined him being cold and miserable and turning to his old favorite songs for solace.

Pessanha, who spent most of his life in self-imposed exile in Macau, reads 非故國, which is literally "not the old country," as "country of exile" ("país de exílio"). Not only does this suit his temperament, but exile is a prominent topic in Chinese poetry. Of course, I had to be contrary, and brief, and keep it literal.

春 means "spring," which was odd to me in a poem set in the second lunar month, but I put it into my first draft anyway. However, Pessanha's translation led me to the dictionary once again, where I learned it can, quite fittingly, also mean "life" or "vitality." That helped my own translation quite a bit.

碧 is usually taken to mean blue-green, often deeply so; Kroll specifically cites its use in 碧空 "the cyan void," which is an awesome way to describe the sky. Here, however, Pessanha translates it as "ferrete," which is not only a branding iron but anything dark and iron-colored, which kinda misses the mark in my book. He also does his usual thing of adding in details that aren't specifically mentioned, but can be extrapolated from the Chinese: 嗷嗷 can mean "incomprehensible honking" ("algaravia dos grasnidos"), but it can also just be the geese's loud honking, without adding any judgement.

And that's that. I have no idea if anyone reads these commentaries, but I dug writing them for a number of reasons. The chance to interact with Camilo Pessanha's work more closely and bring a little more of it to an English-speaking audience (even if that audience is one or two people), learning more about Ming poets and poetry, flexing my own translation muscles a bit—all of this made it a gratifying exercise. In the future I'll be translating more of Pessanha's work from Clepsydra and maybe one day I'll actually write that book about him I've been wanting to do for ages. Sei lá.

Thanks for your time, dear reader, obrigado, car@ leitor/a, and 謝謝看倌.


微臣
史大偉
D.A.S.











XXXX notes: 蓬戶 classical vs modern
吟 voice vs song
yinfeng

-----

幽寂

邊貢

幽寂耽蓬户
凄涼懷舊吟
鶯啼非故國
草色亂春心
落日黃雲暮
陰風碧海深
嗷嗷北來雁
二月有歸音


-----

"Soledade"
Pien-Kung

Deleita-me a solidão desta choupana...
Mas doi-me ao recordar vozes amigas.
Sim, geme o verdelhão- mas em país de exílio
Conturba-me a cor da relva o coração, que remoça.

Desce o sol, em um poente de cirros amarelos.
Passam nuvens sobre o mar, -que é mais ferrete.
Segunda lua.....E, na algaravia dos grasnidos,
Oiço gansos darem o alarme p'ra o regresso.

-----

"Solitude"
Bian Gong

Deep solitude in the ramshackle hut—
Numb with cold, taking solace in old poems

The warbler's song isn't that of the old country
The color of grass riotous, heart pulsing with life

Setting sun, golden evening clouds
Cold wind, deep blue-green sea

Clamorous honking of southbound geese—
Second month, the sound of return.

Oito Elegias Chinesas de Camilo Pessanha, VII: 李夢陽的"湘妃怨"

It's taken a while, but here's the penultimate elegia chinesa translated into Portuguese by Camilo Pessanha. This one was written by 李夢陽 Li Mengyang, whom Pessanha notes was a contemporary of the other poets translated in this collection. (He also notes that Li was known by the name of 天賜 Tianci, "Bestowed by Heaven," but Wikipedia doesn't mention that.) I haven't read much about him, but he was one of the 前七子 Former Seven Masters, a group of well-known literati of the early and middle Ming dynasty. Christ, so many literary and artistic groups to keep track of.

Anyway, since Li was a native of Henan, generally considered part of northern China, the following poem is interesting for its numerous references to southern China. 湘 Xiang is the abbreviation for 湖南 Hunan, a couple provinces south of Li's home province, and also the name of a major river there, which is probably where the nickname comes from. 洞庭湖 Dongting Lake is also in Hunan, while 蒼梧 Cangwu is a county in 廣西 Guangxi, even further south. Maybe further reading will reveal that Li Mengyang drew as much inspiration from the old southern kingdom of 楚 Chu as my man 李長吉/李賀 Li Changji (AKA Li He) did.

妃 comes up in online dictionaries of modern Chinese as "imperial concubine," but given the context, Pessanha's choice of "esposas," or "wives," makes more sense. 怨 has a number of uses, all involving complaints, unhappiness, and bitterness, but I saw it as less of an active complaint ("queixume") than a picture depicting why the wives of Xiang are discontent. It's what you might call a working landscape poem: you have the scenery of the south along with images of those who work its land—the wives, perhaps, but not necessarily so, as one can read the wives as observers instead of participants. I don't know enough about the division of labor in these particular industries (flower-picking and woodcutting; see below) to say for sure, but I do know that Chinese poetry purposely leaves a lot of room for interpretation, and that there are a lot of poems written from the perspective of mournful women, so I'm content leaving the matter of who the narrative viewpoint belongs to up in the air for now.

I don't have a whole lot to say about Pessanha's translation, which as usual illuminates individual elements I would've otherwise missed or glossed over, while giving me opportunities to further explore the flexibility of classical Chinese. His notes provide a lot of useful details, not just to readers of the Portuguese but perhaps also to those of the original Chinese, since I doubt a lot of people reading these poems these days have the ingrained knowledge of references that the original audience did.

I was tempted to make something of  the word 木蘭, "lily magnolia," being split across two lines, albeit in reverse order, but Pessanha's reading of 蘭 as orchid and 木 as precious wood, e.g., camphor and such, makes more sense both factually and poetically, and the whole thing might be coincidental anyway. The verb used before 木, 搴, doesn't seem quite right, but it gets the job done, and my issue there is with the poet, not the translator. Pessanha didn't make any weird or puzzling translation choices here, which is a nice change.

The 玉 jade mentioned is probably some kind of stone chime like the 編磬 bianqing, or maybe it's just emblematic of the sound of a life of luxury being carried on the wind (not that anyone in possession of the former wouldn't be enjoying the latter). Kroll's A Student's Dictionary of Classical and Medieval Chinese tells us that 玉 as a descriptor of color isn't green, but "lustrous or pure white," which makes sense since the jade prized in China was usually nephrite, not jadeite, some of which I collected from a beach in Big Sur, California, almost a decade ago. Pessanha's remarks on the subject are in a similar vein, albeit without the reference to Big Sur.

All in all, Camilo and I are pretty much on the same page here. I commend his solid rendering of Li's poem, and thank him posthumously for not only introducing me to it, but providing such insightful notes. I probably took far less effort with my own hasty translation, but such is the benefit, or maybe curse, of living in this day and age, when we have such an unbelievable bounty of information but often choose to use it in the worst ways possible.

Adeus, leitores, e até breve. I'll finish this series before the year is out, I promise.

微臣
史大偉
DAS

-----


湘妃怨

李夢陽

采蘭湘北沚
搴木澧南潯
淥水含瑤彩
微風托玉音
雲起蒼梧夕
日落洞庭陰
不知篁竹苦
惟見淚痕深

-----

Queixumes das Esposas do "Hsiang"

Li-Mang-Iang

Ilhéus do Norte do Hsiang, onde as orquídeas se ceifam!
Plainos do sul do Lai, onde se talham as essências de preço!
As águas, puras, têm cromatismos de ágata,
Subtil, a brisa vibrações de jade.
Sobe a névoa, entre as sombras do Tsang-u
Baixa o sol entre as brumas do Tung-ting...
As penas dos bambus, quem é que as sabe?
Mas bem se lhes vêem os sinais das lágrimas.

-----

The Unhappy Wives of Xiang

Li Mengyang

Picking orchids on the Xiang's northern islets
Gathering wood on the southern bank of the Li
The clear water tinted with the color of agate
The sound of jade on the breeze
Clouds gather in the Cangwu dusk
The sun sets, Dongting Lake darkens
Who knows the misery of bamboo groves?
All we see is the deep stain of tears

Oito Elegias Chinesas de Camilo Pessanha, VI: 徐禎卿的"古意"

大家好 and olá, folks. Today I bring you the sixth of Camilo Pessanha's oito elegias chinesas, or eight Chinese elegies, and the third written by 徐禎卿 Xu Zhenqing. I had a hard time with this one; the first line really tripped me up for a while, Pessanha and I's readings are quiet different in places, and once again I find myself baffled by some of his choices.

Things get off to a rough start. For a while I simply could not figure out a good way to read, much less translate, the first line, and I'm still not content with what I came up with. Using 爲 as a simple equivalent to "to be" feels lazy and weird. I find Pessanha's translation wordy, because he gives more detail to the 郢客 "foreigner in Ying," than is called for, and which is covered more fully in the notes by his long quotation from 宋玉 Song Yu, one of the contributors to the 楚辭 Songs of Chu. Don't get me wrong, this is exactly the sort of explanation readers like me need, and without it I would've taken even longer to piece together an even worse translation, but it feels excessive. As I've mentioned before, I favor brevity, while Pessanha, at least in the elegias chinesas, tends toward a little more explanation. This tendency is interesting in light of his own poems, which can be wonderfully cryptic.

美人 might typically be read as "women," but in his notes Pessanha, who uses that reading, mentions that one meaning is "homens de valor excepcional," "men of exceptional worth." Either way works, since this is very much a poem of longing, and can even be read from a woman's perspective.

 山水音, according to Pessanha's notes, is not "the sound of mountains and streams", but two separate musical pieces by 伯牙 Bo Ya, a famous 春秋時代 Spring and Autumn period player of the 琴 qin, and I've incorporated this information accordingly. Despite noting this, however, Pessanha completely omits the 山 part of 山水音. Don't ask me why.

帝 means "emperor" and 子 can mean a number of things, including "sons" or "daughters." Pessanha teases out a reference to a couple of princesses who died alongside the Xiang River and became spirits. I imagine the dark clouds mentioned in the next line than hang over the semi-imaginary place known as 瀟湘 Xiaoxiang reflect not only that gloomy tale, but the themes found in what the link above describes as "Xiaoxiang poetry."

In the penultimate line, Pessanha perplexes me again when he decides to use 誰, which means "who," as "I." I'm also not entirely sure how he got "só eu penetro bem a essência," but whatever. His use of "desgarrado," which means "adrift," in the last line is another case of adding something that isn't there, but it works.

Some of Pessanha's choices here are strange, and even border on, well, not quite being wrong, but perhaps too flexible. His notes make it clear that he's done his research, but in this poem more than others I wonder about his knowledge of Chinese. I'm not in much of a position to criticize, since my own Chinese skills leave a lot to be desired, but man, I wish I knew what he was thinking.

Anyway, enjoy the poems, and I'll catch y'all soon.

微臣
史大偉

 -----


古意
徐禎卿

空為郢中客
不見郢中吟
美人高堂上
自奏山水音
帝子葬何處
瀟湘雲正深
寂寥誰共賞
江上獨傷心

-----

EVOCAÇÕES DO PASSADO
Hsu-Chên-Ch'ing 

Eis-me o forasteiro de Ing ... Mas baldada romagem!
Emudeceram de Ing os afamados cânticos.
É alto o pavilhão para onde beldades se retiraram.
A música da Torrente é a que ora modulam...

Os túmulos das princesas para que lado ficam?
Sobre Hsian-Hsiang pairam nuvens negras.
Deste abandono, - só eu penetro bem a essência,
Do Kiang à borda, desgarrado e triste.

-----

Remembering the Past
Xu Chenqing

In vain did the stranger come to Ying;
there are no signs of its ancient songs.
In the main hall, men of the highest standing
freely play songs of mountain and streams.
Where are the emperor's daughters buried?
The clouds over Xianxiang loom darkly.
With whom can one enjoy this lonely place?
Alone on the river, a heart full of woe.

A brief update, and happy birthday to Herman Melville!

Sorry for the radio silence, folks. I've been pretty busy lately, so I don't even have an off-the-cuff translation to share at the moment. In the near future I hope to put up another of Pessanha's elegias chinesas, though.

So what have I been up to? Meeting with a Chinese tutor again, only partially because I'll be visiting Taiwan in the fall. Grinding my way through the cases of 包公 Judge Bao in Chinese. Reading Erik Davis' awesome High Weirdness: Drugs, Esoterica, and Visionary Experience in the Seventies, about which I'll jaw more in another post. I'm about to start Paul Swanson's translation of the magisterial Tiantai Buddhist text 摩訶止観, which he calls Clear Serenity, Quiet Insight, and getting back into deeper Buddhist practice in general.

On the translation front, two things. I had the honor of talking to Goan poet Vimala Devi on the phone a while back, too, which was awesome. She gave me the rights to translate her first volume of poetry, Súria, which I'm working on right now. I don't know when it'll come out, or who will publish it, but I hope to do her justice. She's pushing 90, and I'd like the translation to come out before she leaves this world.

The book about the Santa Mónica nuns I mentioned a while back is going to be published in the near future, probably 2020, and that's been eating up most of my time. Me and my colleague are pretty stoked, even if revising our translation is a total drag. The working title is To Serve God in Holy Freedom.

I turn forty this month, but who cares about my birthday when today, August 1, 2019, marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of someone who reflects America in all its complexity and, no matter how often his work might appear on high school or college syllabi, will never get the respect and understanding he deserves: Herman Melville.

So go read Moby-Dick, or The Confidence-Man, or Clarel, or any other Melville work, and I'll catch you again soon, caro leitor.

DAS

Translator Shout-out: Chloe Garcia Roberts

All right, all right. Let's take a break from translating from Portuguese—these days I'm working on Orlando da Costa's novel O Último Olhar de Manú Miranda and Vimala Devi's first book of poems, Súria—to sit back, crack a beer, and tip our hats, proverbial or otherwise, to some of the translators whose work serves to reinforce not only the belief (shared by not only yours truly but millions of Buddhists, Daoists, and other folks far more with it than me, and that's just talkin' about the quote unquote spiritual side) but the very tangible fact that we are all connected. Maybe this'll become a regular column, since, as you should know by now, translation is an undertaking near and dear to Your Humble Corpse's heart. I read a lot of work in translation, and while the work may get acclaim, the person who translated it is often overlooked or relegated to an afterthought. Which is bullshit: there's so much translating going on these days that the world as we know it couldn't function without it. (No, Google Translate is not an acceptable substitute, and never will be, except maybe when Google Translate is making an attempt at rendering AI-only languages human-readable.)

Anyway, since y'all know how much I like classical Chinese poetry, let's start with Chloe Garcia Roberts, who's produced two deeply awesome books based on the work of 李商隱 Li Shangyin. For the sake of background, Li Shangyin was a late Tang dynasty poet known for allusively dense, sensual poems. I learned about him during my slow, ongoing studies of 李長吉 Li Changji, AKA 李賀 Li He; Li Shangyin wrote 李賀小傳, the first biography of Li Changji. In my book, that alone makes him cool, so when I started reading his poetry—in English, via Chloe Garcia Roberts' translations—I was stoked to find (yet another) Chinese poet whose work I dig. 

But enough about Li Shangyin, of whom you can read more about online. Let's talk about CGR's awesome translations, specifically Derangements of My Contemporaries: Miscellaneous Notes. Even if one sets aside the poems' specific historic aspects, which I don't recommend doing because it's important to remember that these poems (which, as the title implies, are mostly Li Shangyin's notes, themselves a literary genre in China) are over a thousand fuckin' years old, were written amidst a culture wildly different not only from our Western one but in many ways from that of modern China, yet still manage to sound modern and meaningful. I can't stress this enough: Derangements of My Contemporaries reads like an utterly contemporary document, an insightful, no-bullshit account of how shitty people can be, our small quotidian hypocrisies, the protocols we routinely breach. 

"Vexing"
[...]
Enjoying drink the whole night, then finding the wine vessel empty
[...]
Wearing unreliable clothing
A fan that doesn't shoo flies or mosquitoes 

"Displeasure"
Cutting something with a dull knife
[...]
Trees darkening the view
[...]
Summer months wearing thick clothing


"Crippling Injustices"
 [...]
To have money yet be unable to effect change
[...]
Grudging one's mouth food
[...]
Grudging one's body clothing
[...]
For a family to collect books and not appreciate reading
[...]
When near fine mountains and waters, to not wander in delight
[...]
A much-honored official committing a bribery offense

Li Shangyin, via Chloe Garcia Roberts' intuitive rendering, goes on at length in this fashion. It's easy to read snobbery into some of his words; after all, he was a scholar-official, versed (zing!) in poetry and aesthetics to a degree practically nobody else in the China of his time could hope for, but writing him off for that reason is lazy, ahistorical bullshit. What I love is how Roberts has taken these terse lists of observations and made poetry out of them. For her, as well as Li Shangyin, life itself is the stuff of poetry (groan, boring, I know, but fuck it, it's true), and snarky remarks about your coworkers and the random people you see in the street are no less worthy of being made poetry—hell, no less poetic by nature—than anything else. Nature, after all, encompasses everything; ergo nothing is unnatural, and thus can be fitted into "nature" poetry. People especially.

Since I'm not of a terribly analytical bent, I think I'll cease my commentary here. I'll close out by recommending that all y'all check out Chloe Garcia Roberts' translations of Li Shangyin. She apparently has had some poetry of her own published, and I'd be willing to bet it's awesome too. But since we're talking about translation, I'll reiterate that Derangements of My Contemporaries and her expanded Li Shangyin book are worth your time. I'm super-stoked to see someone making it crystal-clear that classical Chinese poetry resonates with our world; I have exactly zero doubts that you will read Chloe Garcia Roberts' work and understand that Li Shangyin is a voice in and out of time.

Thanks, Chloe. You're the kind of translator I want to be, and 李商隱 is honored to have had you share his work with the English-speaking world.


DAS/史大偉

Our Time is Up, We've Had Our Chance: Allagash's Cryptic Visions

I don't remember how I first heard about Allagash (named after the 1976 Allagash abductions, not the brewery), but odds are it was from my friend Shari, a Newfoundland native and fellow metalhead. Neither of us is old enough to remember the peak of Newfie UFO madness, and I doubt the dudes from Allagash are either. But that's okay. Heavy metal, after all, is bigger than us all, and may even be a new form of religion developing before our eyes, somewhat along the lines of what Diana Pasulka argues about belief in UFOs in her intriguing but sometimes too-good-to-be-true book American Cosmic.*

 Cryptic Visions begins with the intro piece "Take Warning," which presents a vision less cryptic than it is idealistic; and given the source of that vision, it's easy to read it as pure speechifying bullshit, since during the course of his doddering, star-poisoned presidency Ronald Reagan was more than happy to start or foment wars, including those that could have led to the extinction of most of the planet's human population. That said, the sentiment is completely in line with the apocalyptic alien-encounter themes that have run through all of Allagash's albums**, and it serves as a callback to older thrash bands' fears of nuclear annihilation and other late Cold War dreads.

It only makes sense that "Beware the Light," the first song—no, I'm not going to prod every song as if I was some almond-eyed Grey mutilating cattle; well, not too much—relies upon Ronnie Raygun's even more spiritually and economically bankrupt, exponentially less appealing, yet possibly far more destructive political descendant, Donald J. Trump, for its title and closing sound bite. ("Sound bite" — as if that semen-stained frat-house pillowcase of a man were capable of speaking at length about anything other than a handful of masturbatory topics.) This total ripper uses the contents of that sound bite for its chorus as well, only to decry the misery that would fall upon everyone after unleashing the fire and fury with which Trump threatened North Korea (which I'm almost 100% sure he can't find on a map without an aide's help). As in every song that follows, the rhythm section is incredibly tight here, and it contributes immensely to the overall awesomeness of this album.

Whenever I hear "Evil Intent" I think of Judas Priest, specifically "Leather Rebel" from Painkiller. The songs aren't dead ringers by any stretch, not least because Mooncrawler's vocals are nothing like Rob Halford's and nobody can recreate the Downing/Tipton magic, but fuck me if the riffs don't tear along at a similar breakneck pace and the energy isn't on the same wavelength. In my book, if you can be honestly compared to Judas Priest, you're doing something right, and while I've been a fan of Allagash for a while, this is the first time I've thought of Priest while listening to them.

And goddamn, they keep doing things right. "Strange Metal" pairs triumphant guitar work and up-and-down speed that belies the rather underwhelming evidence that came from the Roswell debris field, closing with a sample of someone explaining that sunburned New Mexico event. "From the Dark" follows a similar trajectory, but this time the chorus plays against expectations by never actually using the song's title, but instead builds a sort of reverse coda from a general description ("back from the shadows") to the details of an alien abduction or imprisonment. Once more, the riffage is just fuckin' killer.

"Privacy Invaders" is the weakest track on the album. It's not bad, but man, the cadence of the choruses falls flat. The lyrics are hit or miss, too; in that sense they feel like a lot of other metal songs that over the years have warned listeners against encroaching technologies and social changes, so I cut them some slack. Still, not my favorite song here.

"Under Watchful Skies" and "Eagle Lake"—the latter being where the Allagash encounters supposedly happened in Maine 43 years ago— open with the clean acoustic/partial synth intros that Allagash have used on a number of other tracks (my favorites being "The Truth is Out There (It's Getting Closer)" from their first record, and "Canadian Encounters" from the EP of the same name). After the lead-in, the former song launches into a frantic four and a half minutes that echo, musically and lyrically, the paranoia of ages past, not just about aliens but our own fucked-up human situation. Allow me to cite the lyrics:

there is nothing we can do to change this mess we've made
so sit back and relax
the damage shows destruction's here to stay
there's no turning back
they wait and watch for us to change our ways
but we no longer care
our time is up, we've had our chance
the end now lingers in the air 


the day they come
don't be surprised
we know something's wrong here
under watchful skies 

I'm not one to argue with those who claim that we're neck-deep in the Anthropocene, that humanity has basically fucked itself (and, far more sadly, countless other Terran species) out of prolonged existence, but I don't think aliens are watching over us and weeping at our idiocy, no more than God(s) is/are sitting around in the empyrean hoping we'll get our shit together. No, humankind has doomed itself, and if there are extraterrestrials looking on, they're simply waiting to pick up the pieces. Why wouldn't they wait until this blot on an otherwise unstained planet has faded and come in to enjoy it in ways that homo sapiens couldn't? (They'll probably act like us and assume everything is a resource for their own use, of course, and simply be ETI scumbags to our terrestrial parade of selfish dunces, so it's not like I'm eager for aliens to show up. Space brothers they ain't.)

But I digress. "Eagle Lake" continues the Allagash tradition of ending albums with an instrumental piece, though in this case it's even longer and more varied than "Canadian Encounters." It's exactly the kind of interesting and thought-provoking piece that this music demands. You get some samples, some synth, some intensity—it's all there.

In lieu of some kind of summary paragraph, I'll leave y'all with this line by Charles Foltz, one of the Allagash abductees. Take it as you will, 'cause I'm sure as shit not nailing it down to one specific use.

"This happened. If you believe, that's all right. If you don't believe it, I don't care."
 
Stay weird, dudes, and enjoy this album. I know I did, and will continue to do so for a long time. Maybe even until the Greys arrive.

DAS



*Someone could probably write a religious studies paper about the mystical aspects of heavy metal, including things that might be considered its miracles, and convincingly tie it into the weird, dubious continuum of ufological belief and experience; for example, I (uh, I mean, they) could talk about Hypocrisy, whose alien thematics are frequent and reflect existing UFO paranoia and pop culture, while adding a layer of ominousness that only the best X-Files episodes could manage, and whose frontman, Peter Tägtren, is arguably an extraterrestrial himself. (Maybe it's just me and my brother who think that last bit, but hey, don't rule it out.)

**Cryptic Visions is technically Allagash's second full-length, with Canadian Encounters serving as the EP between them. But once upon a time, there was a second album called Dark Future that never saw the official light of day; it was on YouTube for a while before it was taken down. Note that the link will lead you to a dead end, which is intentional; consider it Allagash's episode of missing time. You may be able to dredge up the album elsewhere.

李白的"把酒問月" / Li Bai's "Wine in hand, I ask the moon questions"

When I was in New Mexico a few weeks ago, I spent part of a morning translating the following poem by 李白 Li Bai. One of the Tang dynasty's most famous poets, he hardly needs any introduction. You'll often see his name romanized as Li Po, such as in the case of the awesome Li Po Lounge in San Francisco's Chinatown; that's because 白 is pronounced "bo" instead of "bai" in the context of his name (and "Po" is the old Wade-Giles spelling).

 The bulk of the text below comes from this site, whereas the one I translated comes from Archie Barnes' book Chinese Through Poetry. Where the characters differed, I inserted the ones used in Barnes' book. The differences are mostly variant characters, and where they weren't, I don't think the meanings changed significantly. I don't know the history of the poem, so I can't say which one is the preferred text.

嫦娥 Chang'e, the woman alone on the moon, is a well-known story in Chinese literature, and the Chinese space program's lunar probes have been named after her.

My translation is pretty off the cuff, as usual, but I hope you dig it anyway.


微臣
史大偉

-----

把酒問月
李白

青天有月來幾時
我今停酒一問之

人攀明月不可得
月行卻與人相隨

皎如飛鏡臨丹闕
綠煙滅盡清輝發

但見宵從海上來
寧知曉向雲間沒

白兔擣藥秋復春
嫦娥孤棲與誰鄰

今人不見古時月
今月曾經照古人

古人今人若流水
共看明月皆如此

唯願當歌對酒時
月光常照金樽裏


-----

"Wine in hand, I ask the moon questions"
Li Bai

The moon in the blue sky—
how long has it come for?

For now I'll stop drinking
and just ask it

People try to pull down the moon
but can't hold on to it

But when the moon goes on its way
it follows along with us

Bright as a skybound mirror
overlooking the vermilion palace gate

When the green mist is completely gone
pure radiance comes forth

But seeing it only at night
coming in from above the sea

How could one know that at dawn
it sinks among the clouds?

The white rabbit grinds medicine
autumn becomes spring again

Chang'e lives alone—
who is there to be her neighbor?

People today don't see
the moon of long ago

But today's moon once shone
on the people of long ago

Ancient people, modern people—
they're like flowing water

Together they see the bright moon—
all are like this

I only wish that in the company
of wine and song

The moonlight shines into
the golden wine-jar

"Observations: Spring MMXIX"

"Observations: Spring MMXIX"


back deck newly awash in the Texas saffron of pecan pollen

squirrels, many strangely rufous as of late,
seemingly more numerous than ever

wood sorrel thrives in clover-like ubiquity

house sparrows, worn out, take to the shade
of that bush with the admirable sense of self-restraint

antique roses strain under their own weight

bougainvillea runs slow riot, battling rogue
(as if there were any other kind) morning glory

butchered mulberry plots a triumphant return

white-winged doves, all bulk and alarm,
try to bring down the feeder to feast at will

blue jays bathe joyously in their sun-hot concrete pool

Oito Elegias Chinesas de Camilo Pessanha, V: 徐禎卿的"春思"

First of all, I have to apologize for misspelling the pinyin of the poet's name in my last post. I didn't misspell it in the tags, or anywhere but the first sentence, but that's bad enough. 抱歉！ I updated it with the correct spelling on April 20.

This is another poem by Xu Zhenqing, who wrote the last one we read, as well as the next one. In terms of explanatory notes, I don't have much to offer, and neither does Pessanha, who supplies all of two. It's a pretty straightforward poem, though Pessanha and I read it differently. For starters, he uses 相 as an adverb "indicating transitivity and unidirectionality of following verb, usu. replacing direct object" (per the entry for 相 in Kroll's A Student's Dictionary of Classical and Medieval Chinese). This makes perfect sense, but I've left my initial translation, which uses 相 in the reciprocal sense, as an example of how flexible readings of poems like this can be. In one of his two notes Pessanha explains, via a Tang dynasty poem, how 沾衣 can be taken to mean "soaking one's clothes in tears." Once again, he shows that he knows this material quite well, furthering undermining the argument that Pessanha was actually ignorant of Chinese.

In the second line he refers to rain and trees that aren't explicitly mentioned. This is fine, since Chinese poetry leaves a lot to the visual imagination, but it seems unnecessary to me. The second couplet is noteworthy since a) Pessanha employs the linked-clause pattern typical to classical Chinese, and b) he makes a reference to the King of Chu's palace being in ruins. The first of these is perfectly orthodox, and reminds me yet again that I need to stop overlooking this basic pattern of usage (though I like my reading anyway); the second can be seen as extraneous or, if we take into account Pessanha's title, a detail that lends to the poem being a fantasia.

This is a point where he and I differ strongly—well, as strongly as one can differ with a dead man about a mostly moribund literary language. I'm not familiar with 思 being used as "fantasy" or "dream" or anything similar, though it's certainly not impossible. By doing so, Pessanha shifts the poem's subject matter into an imaginary mode, whereas my reading of 思 as "contemplating" makes the poem more observational or meditative. I could argue for either reading since I think they're both valid, but I tend to like stripped-down interpretations. Besides, Pessanha's version suits the poetic sensibilities demonstrated in his own work, which makes this and the other elegias chinesas worth studying.

That's it for now, y'all, so I'll bid you 再見, adeus, and catch you again soon. Enjoy the poetry!

史大偉


***

春思
徐禎卿

渺渺春江空落暉
行人相顧欲沾衣
楚王宮外千條柳
不遣飛花送客歸

***

Fantasia da Primavera
Hsu-Chên-Ch'ing 

Cai o sol, no imenso horizonte, em flor, do Kiang.
Pára o viandante a olhar. A chuva, que do arvoredo ainda goteja,
     vai-lhe repassando a túnica...
Oh! se dos mil chorões, à volta das ruínas do palácio real de Ch'u,
As flores soltas me fizessem cortejo, à despedida, no regresso à pátria!

***

Contemplating Spring
Xu Zhenqing

The river in springtime, distant and dim as the light fails
Travelers glance at one another, their clothes nearly soaked through
A thousand willows stand outside the King of Chu's palace
But spare no blossoms to see off this homeward-bound traveler