Yang Lian
‘Flying Cornices of the Four-Bridge Misty Rain Pavilion’ is based on a beautiful pavilion in Slender West Lake, Yangzhou, China. I was trying to discover the layers of the depths into it, therefore to build up a philosophical understanding on the traditional Chinese garden-scape. I wrote this piece partly because I was hoping it would become a kind of ‘blue print’ of the a special project we designed for the poetry festival in Yangzhou this year. Five or six world class Chinese aritists would show their works at Slender West Lake and, together with all the festival poets, create a discussion entitled ‘The Creative Dialoque between Contemporary Arts and The Aesthetics of Traditional Chinese Garden’. (Yang Lian) From a translator’s point of view, this poem has given me enormous pleasure not only because of the beautiful images of the Chinese traditional garden scenery the poem depicts, but also due to the philosophical depth of time and space, history, love and destiny that the poem transfers and causes to resonate in a reader’s mind. The complexity of the poem and the difficulty in translating it also lie in the fact the poem weaves in subtle references to works of Tang and Song dynasty poets, works of present day artists and poets, historical and current events and places, in addition to the feelings and thoughts that are a culmination of the author’s personal journey as an exiled poet living and working around the globe.
Lorence Leigh
Flying Cornices of the Four-Bridge Misty Rain Pavilion
Translated by Lorence Leigh
1. Theme of Landscape
Is it a bridge or a pavilion? Both have steps of water
Bridge draped with viburnum and osmanthus in four directions
Pavilion pulling the dead prisoner returning tip of whip wet and green
One fine willow branch whisks down history
One tender window the whole lake drifting destination
One cornice is carrying a garden flying
Who is taking a stroll? Water sleeves dust off poems
chanting each bridge holds in mouth its own moon
each ray of moonlight draws out flute-music of a jade lady
Passing through streets of lotus leaves morning markets of birds singing
Thousands of years push a circling dream that never wants to be woken
Who is not being dreamed? Falling into chaotic rocks upon awakening
paddles babble shadow of that back never caught up
Scattered stars in four directions tear a tourist guide limb from limb
Flying cornices wipe clean the bait of flesh and blood
Both sides of the flower window eyes wiped off twice
water a harem carved into one’s heart
The hand that slapped the fence1 that plucked the strings same wallowing
Slanted corners of the pavilion hang down chill
Bridges are also ghosts hiding in a thousand folds of reflection
holding up aesthetics one word exhausted all flower seasons
Along the footsteps of tiles of the clouds
from the sky stored with endless destruction
who is tearing off this page again?
2. Theme of Time
Weariness of bamboos
are the climbing footsteps locked in the upper story year after year sentenced
to decorate the spring that became amber long ago
Weariness of human turning a corner
wooden stairs making crunching noises a barrel of tar splashed right in the face2
thickness of age and of speed the long scroll deeply sunk
This moment is infinitely massive an arm away lakeshore seashore
also joins the steel you arranged quietly getting rusty
One person a pen point reincarnated slowly
passed through experienced the darkness of corridor
looks out at a crack while ships come and go flowers blossom and wilt
What is not haunting in the pool of blood? Rot
uses this painting to glue exposed organs
repeats the deaths that you have seen those deaths of yours
Flying cornices take and let go fluttering birds tar-smelled spreading snow
Also climbing one crane elegantly dances
sewing through the dead buried even deeper now into the magnet
Which tearful eyes are not down looking
at one’s own distant place that many universes have coloured
into a little ink This and next life will all return to here
in an amber water splashing
Always just dripped down thousands of years
dripping a star upon ruins of the pavilion
Your art found a lotus that will never forgive time
3. Theme of Space
Countless little golden flying cornices are seesawing with ripples
breeze from water surface blowing gently beneath
The room is even more emptied
the cage woven with words glittering like words
Crystalline water pavilion of a line of poetry sails forward
What are locked out from inside are still my eyes
looking at the space as graceful as the sick
continuing an invisible growth Yangzhou
secretly sucking all of its massacres
Colour of willow burned down to the bottom of lake like a sound
calling for help water level plays defeated hills in the distance
My turbulence misappropriated unimaginatively
even so still only borrowed scenery
Lean from the fence since ancient times ink mark still in the form of blood oozing out
Flying cornices extend suckers vigorously The pavilion with even more souls
still cannot fill up a gleam of fake breeze beneath water
A ghost’s homeland left only with endless prison terms
sentenced long ago concentration camp of a body
Imprison brick and wood old paint outside reflecting
the galaxy that imprisons even further beyond Those ‘I’s
stretch the diameter after death
looking at a formation made from water nonexistent
ripples glimmering last words never more than one sentence
Poetry holding the evil news in its hands chillingly
4. Theme of Solitude
One person three images
Pavilion’s one glance twists charmingly as Peony Pavilion3
When three dreams dream one another moonlight out of reach
is all the more sensual A boundless cobblestoned path
conducts swirling tears on mottled bamboo that touch and spill over footsteps
a desire to pluck the moon from water but drowned
A person is a path a cloister a thousand years old
Who is passing by polishing the sound of rain laid with jade
further away than soundless holding directions fully
History more fictitious than no one Wings
four flying cornices dive into a fleshy Guqin4
expose organs broken into pieces
Prince pursue then that ghost boat lady
must continue to fill up the wine glass for ghost poetry
in drunken eyes what’s written completely is never written completely only one line
The pavilion already on horizon washes fragrance overflown from dynasties
seizes a composition dry and cracked at the bottom of eyes
cultivates even those thoughts unable to terminate
Three images blow
a whistle in the shape of human recognize a crashing swallow
Solitude a forever foreign land
in homeland scene of darkness humming in the distance
On the edge of bluestone well sound of father’s cough feels profoundly intimate
sound of father’s cough incomparably hollow
5. In the Rain: Garden Where Paths Never Cross5
(A Farewell Poem)
Rain drops are in the name
but fate of name
is in every little broken heart
wet no longer able to cry
just like green hung everywhere its beaded curtains
glittering refraction
glittering opacity
just like farewell always earlier than first meeting
Flying cornices await here
looking at you handcuffed a thousand times falling down
We fall down mist and rain
one form ripples within another
coming down along flying cornices
In vain a crooked needle stitches broken pieces
an anchor tossed into flesh just like the tip of a pick
chipping more even stranger memories
Everybody’s path is an infinite
end eyes full of autumn waves
staring at a distance just discerned
four tracks slide towards four ruined walls
First poem last written
fate dangles every word and howls faintly
you go lake shore willow colour step by step
deleted to become now
Sound of rain leaks out a garden a body
an overlooking Creator
Words to each other derived further from words
glittering fences demolished while being built
You with your lifetime talent to catch
a misty rain pavilion with parasites a misty rain pavilion with fish bones
Original manuscript of water defies revision
ours in common an untouchable shape
a piece of pink marble6
pushed further to the bottom of sea just like moulds of love-making
still stripping where nothing left
Everybody’s misty rain pavilion
shrouded in love all alone
listens to a heart that could turn white after death7
a passing poem flows into wreckage
is actually true
Houses doubled above and beneath water
This poem is for you the infinite
dreaming your infinity glowing on the flying cornices
your eyelid in misty rain your face lip line
a ray of borrowed golden colour
Farewell buried into one’s own flesh and blood
shape of garden destroyed once at every corner
sacrificed once with every name
Contemplating that you have never left painful beauty of contemplation
along the flying cornices approaching you ascends
Footnotes
- Refers to the Song Dynasty Poet Xin Qi Ji’s poem.
- Refers to the Chinese artist Shang Yang’s painting.
- A famous 16th century Chinese opera of a romantic love story which took place in a garden.
- An ancient Chinese musical instrument.
- Refers to Argentinian poet Jorge Luis Borges’s short story ‘The Garden of Forking Paths’.
- Refers to the Italian city of Verona where Romeo and Juliet’s story was born.
- Refers to the preserved heart of the great Polish composer Chopin.