(1962–2010)
Born in Hunan, Zhang Zao was a prominent poet who came of age after the Misty School. Trained in foreign languages and literature, he graduated from Hunan Normal University with a bachelor’s degree. In 1986 he went to study in Germany and received a Ph.D. in literature from Tübingen University. For years he was the poetry editor for the journal Today. In 2010 he died of lung cancer in Tübingen, Germany, the hometown of his favorite poet, Friedrich Hölderlin, whose work was introduced to China during the “culture fever” in the 1980s.
My first real agony
When whiteness blurs transparency
Beads of sweat commit suicide
And you are naked as the walls
Our first, how pure it is
And pretty like math
A fever seizes me
Light and skin hanging upside down
You, a dismembered body of flowing water
Choke me in the night
And scorch me in arrays of clarity
My purple friend, the Emperor, weeps for me
Even the moon, as a blessing, opens the white door
At ten o’clock the desk lamp stops its walk
Scraps of paper behave like bewildered caresses
You ask me to forget the abysmal alleys nearby
Where year upon year the elderly fill up the windows
Even a cup of shining stars
Even the childlike dawn to the left,
That obscures the hanging constellations, is too weak
To support the torrents of yesterday’s wind
Oh, how white with purity I am now, like
The air before you were born
You once blossomed like a real pomegranate
As long as there are regrets
plum blossoms fall.
To see her swim for the far shore
or climb a pine ladder,
there is beauty in dangerous acts.
Better yet, to watch her return on horseback
cheeks flush with shame,
bowing her head, as if answering the Emperor.
A mirror always waits for her
And bids her to sit at her usual spot in the mirror,
looking out the window.
As long as there are regrets
plum blossoms fall
and cover the southern mountain.
a letter opens, someone says
that the sky’s turned cold
another letter opens
it’s empty, empty
but heavier than the world
a letter opens
someone says he’s singing from the heights
someone says, no, even if a potato is dead
by inertia
it can still grow small hands
another letter opens
you sleep soundly like an orange
but peeling you naked, someone says
he has touched another you inside
another letter opens
everyone is laughing
everything around is uproarious with laughter
a letter opens
clouds and whitewater run wild outdoors
a letter opens
I am chewing certain darkness
another letter opens
a bright moon high in the sky
another letter opens, crying
death is a real thing.
(Translated by Yunte Huang and Glenn Mott)