Isabelle Li translates Zheng Xiaoqiong
Zheng Xiaoqiong (郑小琼) was born in 1980 in Nanchong, Sichuan. In 2001 she left home to work in Dongguan, Guangdong, and began writing poetry. Her poems and essays have appeared in various literary journals, including Poetry (《诗刊》), Flower City (《花城》), and People’s Literature (《人民文学》). She has published over ten collections of poetry, including Women Workers, Jute Hill, Zheng Xiaoqiong Selected Poems, Thoroughbred Plant, Rose Manor. Her work has won numerous awards and been translated into many languages, including German, English, French, Korean, Japanese, Spanish, and Turkish.
郑小琼
黄昏的车头淅淅沥沥的呜咽着，青山隐于烟雾之外。京广线上的灯盏，庄稼的孕育着一个个俚语的村庄，它先行抵达铁轨的尽头。
溅着几千万民工的颤栗，溅着雨水的头，溅着那头不肯停落的雨滴。
树木，村舍，渐退的山坡，缓慢劳作的农人。幻觉的玻璃之外，退去了一条疲倦而污染哭泣的河流。
暮色从前方插入车厢内，黑暗从铁轨上的黑雨水间涌起。
我看对座的旅客，疲惫而辛酸，残滴着衣锦回乡的松脂，一滴一滴，清澈而苦涩，保持着雨水冲洗过的洁净。窗外，山河呜呜而过，穿过雨水的戳印，向北而行。
官僚们正把一块土地划成块状抵押给水泥，钢筋，化学制品，资本银行。断枝的树木与砍削半边的山岭是最后的赎金，它们的背后，一群失地的百姓像雨水一样哭泣。
看车，看雨水。
看呜呜而过的河流。
看斑斑驳驳的车厢，火车凶狠地鸣叫，
人世间，人们正像一群赌徒一样抵押着一切。
我把行程抵押给铁轨。把痛苦的生活抵押给虚无的理想。
词典里面，是一张从夏到民国的周期表。它们穿汉越唐，过宋经清，像我此行，经湖南，过贵州……缓慢的车是否抵达目的地。
雨水正下，村庄退后。像过去的时间，埋葬在火车行程间，不复再现。
Rainwater Illusions
The dusky locomotive sobbing drips and drops, among the murky mountains veiled beyond the smog. Passing by the lights on the Beijing-Guangzhou Track, by the villages of slang borne to crops, it reaches the end of the line first.
Splashing millions of shivering migrant workers, hitting their heads, the raindrops refuse to stop.
Trees, villages, retreating mountain slopes, slow toiling labourers. Outside the glass of illusions, weeps a weary, polluted river.
Night penetrates the carriage from the front. Between the tracks in the black rain darkness swells.
I look at the passengers sitting opposite, in their homecoming sartorial splendour, miserable, exhausted, dripping resinous sweat, drop by drop, clear and bitter, rain-washed.
Through the windows, mountains and rivers whistle past, through the stamping marks of rain, heading north.
Bureaucrats are carving up land as collateral for concrete, steel, chemicals, and capital. Trees with broken limbs and hills half hewn are the last ransom. Behind them, a crowd of commoners are raining tears.
Watching the train. Watching rainwater.
Watching the weeping river.
Watching the motley carriage. Hearing the train’s fierce shriek.
In this world, people are mortgaging everything like gamblers.
I’ve pledged my itinerary to the trainline, my painful life to illusory aspirations.
Inside the dictionary is a periodic table from Xia Dynasty to the Republic of China. Across Han, over Tang, onto Song, then Qing, my trip reaches Hunan, into Guizhou … Will the slow train ever arrive at its destination? Rain falling, villages retreating. Time past is buried in the journey of this train, never to be seen again.
入楚
山鬼隐于水泥地板庄稼的化学药品间，穿豹皮的勇士们就已去了城市之间，剩下那头金钱豹已尸骨无存，急剧退却的河流，菖蒲与艾草，一朵盛开的荷花隐于时间之中。
日月星辰，风雨雷电，春夏秋冬，云海苍穹正化着一支箭，越过沼泽井泉，田土宅厝，命中注定的鸟兽虫鱼们，花树藤蔓们，它偏执于相对安好的命运。
灶台鸡笼的神，育鬼育魅育妖精育花鼓腔调中的菩萨与亡灵。
一只苦闷的鸟深入湖泊的深处，它来自远古，有着兽样的面孔。
它沿着京广线漂泊着，出川入楚，她怀抱着原始的直觉，返回一只鸾鸟的原形。
旧世隔得太远，隔了几个轮回，剩下苍茫的记忆，在一棵苦楝树的枝杈间寻找人世与兽面的花纹。
入楚。她已似回到前生的眸间。
湘鬼或者傩女，在巫的气息里，人们对她的回忆已成为山，成为水，成为河，成为日常俚语。花烛燃烧她的脊柱。
天空飞来古代的鸟与记忆，八百里的湖泊干涸的滩头。
撒满白花花的时光，三吨重的传说入水。
原来是一只鸟，掠过。
她的翅膀入楚，入楚之穹庐，入楚之乾坤。
她白色的翅膀划过一道道巫的魂迹，在光的波澜间。
万物正呼吸，怀孕，育动，分娩。
入楚，她黑暗的记忆不断衔接着前世，返回那些完好无损的巫咒与傩语。
她尘世间隐匿着，隐匿了她数千年轮回的鸟翅，隐匿了她的兽面。剩下记忆不断在梦境中返回前世。
万山已入暮，惟有白雪喧哗着黑夜。
Reaching Chu
Mountain Ghost hides under the concrete floor, among chemicals and pesticides for crops, in the city left behind by warriors once clad in leopard skin, though the bones of the last leopard are long gone. Rivers retreat, and the calamus, and the wormwood. A lotus blooms inside time.
The sun, moon, and stars; the wind, rain, thunder and lightning; the four seasons, the seas of clouds and the infinite skies – all become an arrow. It flies across swamps and wells, meadows and houses, doomed birds, beasts, bugs, fishes, flowers, trees, and vines, aiming for a relatively peaceful destiny.
Goddess of stove and chicken coop, you give birth to the demons and spirits, and the Bodhisattvas and dead souls in folk song and dance.
A sullen bird flies deep into the lake. It comes from the past, with the face of a beast.
It drifts along the Beijing-Guangzhou Track, out of Chuan, into Chu. Bearing an original instinct, it returns to the phoenix form.
The Old World is too distant now, a few reincarnations removed. All that remain are indistinct memories, like the beastly and humanly patterns amid the branches of a chinaberry.
Reaching Chu, she has restored the gaze of her former life.
A sorceress or a witch, in the voodoo vapour, memories of her turned into mountains, rivers, colloquial vernacular. Candles burn up her vertebrae.
Ancient recollections fly from the sky, over the dry sandbanks of Dongting Lake.
Sprinkled with white time, a legend, three tons heavy, slides into water.
A bird, gliding.
Her white wings soar into Chu, into its firmament, its cosmos, sweeping over traces of sorcerous souls in the surf of light.
Everything is breathing, conceiving, burgeoning, birthing.
Reaching Chu, her dark memories reconnect with history, recovering the untouched spells and folk lingo.
Hiding in the mortal world, she’s shrouded her wings over a thousand lives and veiled her beastly face. Remnants of her memories linger in recurring dreams.
Ten thousand mountains sink into the night. Snow is the only noise, whitening the dark.
乔木
山冈的栎木站成猛兽，微小的积水敲落了楝果。
栲树的前生是明月，梓木梦见楚王与浮云，樟木从梦中脱身来到庭院。剩下山楂在岐路上点灯，照亮了故乡与谜语。秋天落地长出了桔梗，夏天的栗树林把时光隔成过去与未来，榆木的瘩哒是结实的今生，有枢木把眺望送到远方。
葛藤为你饱尝悲痛，去年正是樟木的另一侧
刺槐开花，松木在追悼着什么人，它们之间的关系就像我的一场梦。
有雨水降落葡萄架下，白杨树站在发亮的铁轨间，我梦见庄子与蝴蝶。
必须唤来周公为我解梦，昨夜我用一根桃木挡住汹涌的大海。
这是人间生活，从无到有，从人到人，剩下灰喜鹊在梨木上慢慢聚集，那些发亮的鸣叫着的喜鹊，像那些无知的时光，停了一下便飞走了，剩下一树白梨花开着，又谢了。
楠竹有着无尽的缠绵，它们的悲伤青碧着日日夜夜。安身立命的杉树林站在路上期待着什么，星辰与月色像黄叶一样，仿佛一条镜中的河流，它要找到归向大海的路程。
我等待一棵梧桐，繁华散尽，剩下我，原本是孤独的一只凤凰。
站在回忆间的枥木，它的面容变幻。
柏木站于墓穴，从石廊到曲径，稠密的银杏移来十月的光阴，银白的花开满了十三世的孤独，我做了十二轮树木，才轮回成今生的行人，我沉默了十二轮，积聚着太多的言语。
哦，这些与我一般沉默的乔木，它们看透了人世沧桑，它们是前世或者来生的我
如果，我与它们一样，站在此与彼之间。
平静地度着每一滴时光。
Trees
Oak on the hill rears into a beast. Dripping droplets knock down chinaberry’s fruit.
Beech’s former life was a bright moon. Catalpa dreams of King Chu and floating clouds. Camphor laurel frees itself from a dream and comes to the courtyard. Hawthorn, left behind, lights a lamp on the side road, illuminating hometown and riddles. Autumn falls to the ground and grows into bellflowers. Summer’s chestnut forest partitions between past and future. Elm’s knot is the solid here and now. Thorn-elm casts its longing into the distance.
Arrowroot has endured your sorrow. Last year was just the other side of camphor laurel.
Black locust blooms. Pine mourns someone. The relationship between them seems a dream of mine.
Rain descends beneath the grape trellis. White poplar stands between gleaming train tracks. I dream of Master Zhuang and butterfly.
Must call on the Duke of Zhou, the God of Dreams, to interpret for me: last night I used walnut wood to ward off a surging sea.
Such is a worldly life, from nothing to something, from mortal to mortal. The last magpies slowly gather on pear tree, shiny, chirping, like those innocent days, staying briefly before flying off, leaving a tree of white blossoms, which then fade.
Mao bamboos have endless sentimentality. Their grief turns the nights and days green. Fir forest by the road, established and settled, is waiting for something. The stars and the moon drift like yellow leaves, like a river in a mirror, looking for its way back to the sea.
I wait for a parasol tree. While the bustling has dispersed, I remain, formerly a lonely phoenix.
Hornbeam, unmoving between memories, its face everchanging.
Cypress stands at a grave. From stone verandas to winding paths, dense gingko trees transport October’s light and shadow. Their silver flowers bloom thirteen lives’ solitude. I was a tree for twelve lives before becoming this traveller. I was silent for twelve rounds, and amassed too many words.
O, trees silent like me, have seen through life’s vicissitudes. They are my former or future selves,
If I could stand like them, between here and there,
Peacefully passing each moment.
旧堂
月光很白，三株腊梅开放院上。青石板上，唐朝檐滴，点点落于宋代的雕龙
星大如斗，照着明代的溪流，长流不息的草木，年年盛开，年年凋零，红尘里往事。落魄的书生读着清代的八股文。
有鱼跃出，有鸟长鸣，有花开放，老虎出没村头的山冈。
有人谈论嘉庆年间的往事，乾隆皇帝三下江南，有人坐在庭院的槐树下谈论收成，因果报应的鬼神，时光怀着忧伤，清晨在鸡冠花上凝成露滴，夜晚在星座的疼痛间彷徨。
男人们抽着旱烟，种五谷蔬粮，桃花开得艳，有人落发为僧。
女人们纺着纱线，织绸缎锦绣，鹧鸪叫得伤，落红沉默千里。
他骑毛驴，进京城，读四书五经，论语楚骚，读朝代更换，帝王君臣。经书里的人生开始变瘦，瘦成毛驴里的一根肋骨，瘦成古驿道里杉树林的一阵风。
他骑着黄河与长江，骑着秋风与夕阳，骑着满树的枯枝与愁肠。
他骑着一轮浅浅的海峡，骑着东风无常的人生。
人们在戏台上虚拟着欢乐和喜欢，善恶轮回。
它倒了，倒在一场积雪的冷中。
我坐在荒草径间，看落日心怀黯然，岁月滚滚而去。
槐树依旧茂盛，椿树依旧开花，燕子依旧回来，筑巢旧梁。
Old Manor
Under white moonlight, three ice laurels flower in the courtyard. Upon the bluestone slate, Tang Dynasty roofs drip onto Song carved dragons.
Giant stars illuminate Ming rivulets. The everlasting flora flourish and fade like history in red dust. A shabby scholar is reading Qing octopartite essays.
Fish jump, birds sing, flowers bloom, tiger roams the village hills.
Some discuss the past in the Jiaqing Era, and recount Emperor Qianlong’s three visits down the South Bank. Some sit under the pagoda tree in the courtyard, speaking of the harvest and the ghosts and spirits of karma. Time, laden with sadness, condenses into dewdrops on the celosia at dawn, and at night shuffles among the agonised constellations.
Men smoke tobacco and plant crops and vegetables. Peach flowers open bright. Shaved hair falls at ordination.
Women are spinning yarn, weaving satin splendid. Partridges cry mournfully, and the thousand miles of fallen red remain silent.
He rode a donkey, arrived at the capital, read Four Books Five Classics and Chu Songs, studied dynasties, emperors, kings and their courts. Life in the scriptures began to shrink, thin as the donkey’s rib, thin as the gusty wind on the ancient trade road through the fir forest.
Riding the Yellow River and the Long River, riding autumn wind and setting sun, riding trees of dry branches and sorrow.
He rode a shallow strait, a life of capricious easterly wind.
On the theatre stage, people simulate joy and love, good and evil.
It’s collapsed, down in the cold of the snow.
I sit on the forlorn path, watching sunset in dejection, watching time rolling by.
The pagoda tree is still lush. The red toon still blooms. The swallows return to nest on the old beam.
Isabelle Li is a Chinese Australian writer and translator. She has published in various anthologies and literary journals, including The Best Australian Stories, Southerly, and World Literature in China. Her collection of short stories, A Chinese Affair, was published by Margaret River Press in 2016.