Qin Zhi, who wrote under the pen name Qin Zihao (Ch’in Tzu-hao), was of the minority Miao ethnicity and a native of Guanghan, Sichuan. While a student at Sino-French University in Beijing from 1932 to 1935, he started publishing poems and was widely exposed to Western poetry. From 1935 to 1937 he studied economics and political science at Central University in Tokyo. After returning to China, he worked as a journalist in the military, from which he was honorably discharged in 1943. On a business trip to Taiwan in 1945, he was unable to return to the mainland due to the worsening civil war. Separated from his wife and child, he lived on the island till he died of cancer in 1963.
Qin was one of the most respected and influential figures on the poetry scene in Taiwan in the 1950s and ’60s. He edited many poetry journals and poetry columns in newspapers, taught poetry courses at the Correspondence School of Chinese Literature and Art, founded the Blue Star Poetry Society, and served as a mentor to many young, aspiring poets. His complete poetry and critical essays were published posthumously.
Desert wind causes the heart of youth to age
Under the sun I chase after the shadows of my own dreams
Dream shadows fade on the distant horizon
Hope is forever buried in the bleak suburbs
In the suburbs not a bird sings
All that’s left is a hushed, pale twilight
At midnight, a prisoner in an insane asylum
I portray the sweetness of life
(1934)
(translated by Michelle Yeh)
I often sink my memories
Into the bottom of a deep ocean
Yet on this sleepless night
I want to dredge up long-gone memories
From those forgotten depths
Memories are pearls
Memories are corals
The happiest memories swim
Like schools of parti-colored fish
Among ink-green seaweed
(early 1950s)
(translated by Jeanne Tai)
Cocteau once said
His ears are seashells
Filled with ocean sounds
I say
Seashells are my ears
I have countless ears
Listening to the ocean’s secrets
(1952)
(translated by Jeanne Tai)
Beyond the gallery windows wildflowers wave
their powdery white heads
Autumn lets fall a dirge with its falling leaves
Thinking back on summer’s pitiless noon hour
Like a black round fan the moon blocked out the sun’s radiance
As you disappeared into the gallery’s black drapes
The match’s flame burned blue, staining the darkness yellow
A life blazed away, but still no sight of your final radiance
Your unfinished portrait
Ruined by brushstrokes gone awry in the gloom
Mona Lisa’s smile, that I did not keep
Though a gallery’s worth of mysteries remains
Venus’s torso, still radiating brilliance
Beethoven’s death mask, miserable in its deathlessness
Helen, brimming with tears, has gone back to Greece
I did not die by the Spartan king’s cold steel
The pardoned remain behind
In eternal servitude
In the gallery, whether I am lying, squatting, or standing
A body whose psyche has been rent asunder
Pale as a stone statue from ancient Greece
wild-haired and sightless
(published 1962)
(translated by Jeanne Tai)
Whence have you come
A fortuitous turn, a chance encounter
Not to be awaited, nor watched for
On the shores of midday dreams
I first met the Black Narcissus in your eyes
Its gleaming reflection
Wiped away my sleepy bewilderment
Second nature, not something to be captured
Profound beyond imagining
My imaginary Black Narcissus
I wish to become a devotee of that ultimate pureness
Yet already I have dissolved into sheer limpidity
Golden stamens, glistening with wondrous words
Is it an abstruse announcement, releasing my troubles
Into the dawn in your eyes?
A pure, limpid place
Only to be chanced upon, not sought
Black Narcissus, water nymph
Growing in Lethe’s languid swirls
(published 1962)
(translated by Jeanne Tai)
In the secluded room, the night turns thick like your hair
Shadows on the wall stand out like reliefs
Mountain nymphs and sea sprites
Hide in your thick hair
The hour of bliss germinates in your smile
Sprites dancing on the Muses’ strings on Parnassus
Naiads frolicking in the waters of the ancient Aegean Sea
Now all hide in the mysterious depths of your hair
Holding their breath
My breath like a breeze wafts through your tresses
Listening to your heart, like a slight tremor in the earth’s core
Up there on the wall is my fragmented shadow
I can make out the contemporary sad countenance of the
Flying Dutchman, adrift in the twentieth century
He will cremate the oars
Bury them in the dense stillness of your hair
And with the merry sprites
Listen to your heartbeats foretelling a good omen of death
(1962)
(translated by Jeanne Tai)
Seashells, Neptune’s temples
When starlight knocks at midnight
the temple doors open
And there at the edge of the sea
a shell calls out your name—
Ah! Beautiful daughter of Neptune
Like a shell, my house has no rafters
Like a shell, my house is small
My door opens to the azure sky
The vista rolls out, unhurriedly
to the limitless empyrean
Through my window, night after night
the moon and stars come calling
The sea is inside, telling a story about Neptune
Music flows, you are asleep in the sea
Asleep in the sea, the reflection of your light
like a rainbow
Revealed in the mirror’s resplendent surface
Trembling, I bow down and worship
Your forty black roses
And one red camellia
Says the sea, come float in me
Says the earth, come weigh on me
Yet here we are
Beyond space, beyond time
The lines on a shell no longer mark
morning and evening tides
Numbers have returned to the primordial,
the recondite
This place where we are is an alien realm
So, come float in me, says the sea
And a shell calls out your name
(published 1962)
(translated by Jeanne Tai)