Hopkins Garden - Ouyang Jianghe / 欧阳江河

Ouyang Jianghe / 欧阳江河




Hopkins Garden

The ink moon comes to the page.
This paper moon of the ancients, never sprayed
with pesticides.

A flower thief reincarnated as night mist
sleeps in a midnight garden.

He dreams of another on himself
stolen by flowers, blooming for a while.

… in this momentary bloom,

a thousand years pass.
No one knows the true form of these flowers,
whether they are Zhuangzi, or are Tao Yuanming.

Even the young scholar borrowing moonlight to read by
hasn’t discerned the metaphor of flowers.

The ancients and moderns look at each other with the eyes of a flower.
And seen through Buddha’s eyes, all are blind.

From the eye of the flower flies one hundred thousand fireflies,
a sky full of stars falling to the grass.

Without the buttons of the stars, can flowers and nuclear weapons
put on the clothes of the clouds?

Cloud world, body full of wormholes,
entirely unaware that time has slipped away.

Flower-thief, if you suddenly wake,
then step into the starry sky holding your lantern of words.

(Translated by Lucas Klein)




霍金花园

水墨的月亮来到纸上。
这古人的，没喷过杀虫剂
的纸月亮呵。

一个化身为夜雾的偷花贼
在深夜的花园里睡着了。

他梦见自己身上的另一个人
被花偷去，开了一小会儿。

……这片刻开花，
一千年过去了。

没人知道这些花儿的真身，
是庄子，还是陶渊明。

借月光而读的书生呵，
竟没读出花的暗喻。

古人今人以花眼对看。
而佛眼所见，一直是个盲人。

从花之眼飞出十万只萤火虫，
漫天星星落掉在草地上。

没了星星的钮扣，花儿与核弹，
还能彼此穿上云的衣裳么？

云世界，周身都是虫洞，
却浑然不觉时间已被漏掉。

偷花人，要是你突然醒来，
就提着词的灯笼步入星空吧。



*



The Smoker’s Book

the books I read are written by smokers
the books I buy are smoked tobacco leaves
the money I spend money is what’s left after cigarettes

the lighter burns up the book’s words
and leaves a wordless book
to read or to write: that is the question

in a smoker’s book the words glow
after the cigarette is put out the filament glows
everything smoked is electric
what hasn’t been smoked stays in the darkness

which burns brighter, tungsten or tobacco?

ashes to ashes, red ash and grey ash
one of them in a nicotine fit
steals cigarette money from book money
but with all the book money spent on cigarettes
there’s only enough to buy a newspaper

someone who doesn’t buy books
collected all the money not spent on books
to start up a newspaper
but the wind blew the words away

the day that was yesterday, it wasn’t enough to read a paper
but it was enough to read a hundred books
the day that was today, all today’s books
were written by the ancients

moveable type opens its eyes
and looks blankly on what the blind see
other languages squawk through inert memorization

how odd the length of life, not enough to read all the books under heaven
but enough to rewrite
every book in the library

only when it’s half written is there a desk
when the cigarette has been smoked to the butt
you still don’t have any pants to put on

the royalties for Das Kapital
couldn’t pay for Marx’s cigarettes
the British Museum was hazy with smoke and fog
smoked backwards the cigarette dangling from Trotsky’s mouth
probably won’t give you Stalin

one hell of a nicotine fit ascends into the blue jade heavens
the road to the library from the newspaper stand
is plastered with no smoking signs
the lungs’ ashtray thrown out

there is a great big ink bottle in the brain
an unwritten book that everyone is reading
when it’s finished, not a word will have been written

the history of the book reduced to an evening paper
news pushed back to the incident’s happening
happening pushed back to before the happening

to use the eyes of a newspaper reader to read
books, that’s something for a spirit
carrying a severed head, hands cut off too
writing dead things back to life
eyes writing themselves blind, heart writing itself broken

reading as far and long as possible
writing as sublimely as can be

(for Xi Chuan)

(Translated by Lucas Klein)





抽烟人的书

只读抽烟人写的书
只买烟草抽掉的书
只花抽烟抽剩的钱

打火机将书里的字烧光了
剩下一本无字书
读，还是写：这是个问题

抽烟人的书，字是亮的
烟丝熄灭后，钨丝亮了
烟抽过的东西全都有了电
没抽的，继续呆在黑暗里

钨丝和烟丝，哪个更亮？

红尘和灰尘
其中一个犯了烟瘾
想从书钱手上抢烟钱

但书钱早被烟钱
花得只够买一份小报

不买书的人
把买书省下的金钱
攒起来办报
但风把报上的字也吹走了

昨日之日，不够读一份报
但足够读一百本书
今日之日，今人的书
全是古人写的

活字睁开眼睛
不解地看着盲人所见
鸟语，出现在死读书里

悠悠此生，读不完天下书
但足以把图书馆的书
从头写一遍

书写到一半时才有了书桌
烟抽得只剩一小截烟屁股时
还是没裤子穿

资本论的稿费
不够马克思的烟钱
大英图书馆烟雾蒙蒙
托洛茨基嘴边那支烟
倒过来抽未必是斯大林

地狱般的烟瘾升上碧云天
从报摊到图书馆
一路张贴着禁烟令
肺里的烟灰缸被扔了出来

头脑里有一只巨大的墨水瓶
从未写出的书，人人都在读
书读完了，却一字也没写

书的历史减缩成一份晚报
新闻被退回事件的发生
发生，被退回发生之前

以读报人的眼光看
书，是幽灵的事
提着断头，双手也被砍去
把死的东西写得活过来
眼睛写瞎，心写碎

尽可能久远地读
尽可能崇高地写

（写给西川）




***




Ouyang Jianghe, was born in Luzhou, Sichuan Province in 1956 while his ancestral hometown was in Hebei, China. As a nationally known poet, and a critic on poetry, music and culture, his works have been published since 1979, including over 200 poems, many articles on poetry, and lots of reviews on contemporary fine art, music, film, and drama, which amount over 350,000 words. His books published in China include the poem collection Through the Glass of Words (1997, Reform Press), the collection of poems and criticism Who Leave, Who Stay (1997, Hunan Literature and Art Publishing House), the collection of reviews and essays Standing on the Side of Fiction (2000, SDX Joint Publishing House), and the poem collection Tears of Things (2008, The Writers Publishing House). He is now living in Beijing, engaged in writing and cultural exchange affairs both domestic and abroad. As a poet, Ouyang Jianghe’s writing accentuates the originality and sophisti¬cation of thoughts and hybridity of language, emphasizes the deep links between personal experience and public realities. As a poetry critic, he has made particular contributions to both the theorization and text analysis of contemporary Chinese poetry. Ouyang Jianghe’s writing practice is highly characterized as contemporary, and has made broad and lasting influence among his peers, whereby he is recognized as one of the most important poets of China since 1980s.


欧阳江河，1956 年生于四川省泸州市。著名诗人，诗学、音乐及文化批评家，书法家，北京师范大学终身特聘教授，博导。曾任《今天》文学社社长。在内地及港台地区出版中文诗集十四本， 文论及随笔集一本。在国外出版中德双语诗集四本，中英双语诗集两本，中法双语诗集一本，西班牙语诗集三本，阿拉伯语诗集一本。自1993 年起，欧阳江河多次应邀赴美国、德国、英国、法国、意大利、荷兰、西班牙、捷克、匈牙利、奥地利、俄罗斯、埃及、约旦、墨西哥、哥斯达尼加、日本、韩国、印度、新加坡、新西兰、澳大利亚等国五十多所大学及文学中心讲学、访问、朗诵。作品获第九届（2010 年）华语文学传媒大奖年度诗歌奖，第十四届（2016 年）华语文学传媒大奖年度杰出作家奖，北京《十月》文学奖（2016 年），英国剑桥大学诗歌银叶奖（2016 年），武汉《芳 草》诗歌奖（2019 年），南京《钟山》诗歌奖（2021 年）。其写作实践深具当代特征，在同时代人中产生了广泛的、持续的影响， 被视为1980 年代以来中国最重要的代表性诗人之一。