The Shaper - Hu Sang / 胡 桑

Hu Sang / 胡 桑





The Shaper

—for Xiaotiaotiao

Having tried a number of possibilities,
You withdraw into a small town. It's raining at the right time;
The rain gathers everything into light fog.

Living your life is a transparent art. You become as humble
As the Qipu River you live beside. You hold yourself back
In time, and learn to measure the depth of dusk.

You enter and exit life; most things cannot be explained.
You wander from orchard to dentist, then drive
To the gate of the schoolyard, a route
Unknown through geometry; it can overflow at any moment.

Irregular dreams on the heel might be toxic;
Sorrow is denser than clay, but you wake
In the morning, focused on wearing a shoe.

Like a flowerhorn fish, your life is tamed
For a dark interior. Day by day, to counteract disorder,
And shape life into silence, you make an easy form.

Autumn has been planted in the bedroom.
"Returning inward is redemption." Your body is transformed
Like a persimmon, and autumn has another kind of ripeness.

(Translated by Brenda Hillman)




赋形者

——致小跳跳

尝试过各种可能性之后，
你退入一个小镇。雨下得正是时候，
把事物收拢进轻盈的水雾。

度日是一门透明的艺术。你变得
如此谦逊，犹如戚浦塘，在光阴中
凝聚，学习如何检测黄昏的深度。

你出入生活，一切不可解释，从果园，
散步到牙医诊所，再驱车，停在小学门口，
几何学无法解析这条路线，它随时溢出。

鞋跟上不规则的梦境，也许有毒，
那些忧伤比泥土还要密集，但是你醒在
一个清晨，专心穿一只鞋子，

生活，犹如麦穗鱼，被你收服在
漆黑的内部。日复一日，你制造轻易的形式，
抵抗混乱，使生活有了寂静的形状。

我送来的秋天，被你种植在卧室里，
“返回内部才是救赎。”犹如柿子，
体内的变形使它走向另一种成熟。



*



The capricious

Beyond the window, the city sets loose contentious night,
late spring’s mists inhaled by every lung, no exceptions.
Sometimes we forget we’re from different regions,
yet this cool wind can’t fill the gulf between our bodies.

Our accents rouse our dialects; windows wake in alloy frames.
Mirrors are at pains to translate ignorance, human arrogance.
Taopu West Road knows me well, though its silent gate stays shut.
The Taopu River, wanting nothing, never sleeps.

That couple upstairs, free of insomnia, talk heart-to-heart all night,
no reason. Most people sometimes please each other,
sometimes hurt. Bodies wake and sink asleep.
Only this letter, unopened, guards its dark packet.

(Translated by Diana Shi & George O’Connell)




任性的人

窗外是城市，释放着争执的夜。初夏的薄雾
被吸入每一个人的肺部，它不懂得什么差别。
有时候我们只是忘记了：我们，来自不同的省份，
微凉的风，到底是无法修复身体与身体之间的裂缝。

口音中的方言醒着，未闭合的铝合金窗醒着，
镜子在诉说着容忍，试图翻译人们的无知与傲慢，
桃浦西路已经认识了我，静默的大门却上着锁。
近处的桃浦河并不渴望什么，然而它醒着，醒着。

楼上，两个从不失眠的人促膝长谈，彻夜。
不为什么。大多数人活着，有时相互取悦，
有时相互伤害，于是，肉体醒来又睡去。
只有一封未拆的信，才能够守护那一团晦暗。




***




Hu Sang, poet and translator. He received Ph.D. from Tongji Uni¬versity (2014). He was a visiting scholar from Bonn University in Ger¬many (2012-2013), and is an invited researcher at National Museum of Modern Chinese Literature (2020- ). He is the author of a collection of poems, The Shaper, and a collection of prose, Over the River Mengxi. He is also the author of two collections of commentaries, Looking at People Across the Abyss and Beginning with a Distraction. He has also translated I Have Lived Such a Lonely Life: Selected Poems of Wisła¬wa Szymborska (2014), Bob Dylan: The Lyrics, 1961-2012 (co-trans¬lation, 2017), The Dyer’s Hand (by W. H. Auden, 2018), Life Studies: Selected Poems of Robert Lowell (2019), and Vision of San Francisco Bay (by Czesław Miłosz, await publication). He is an assistant profes¬sor at Tongji University.


胡桑，诗人、译者。同济大学哲学博士（2014 年）、德国波恩大学访问学者（2012—2013 年）、中国现代文学馆特邀研究员（2020 年—）。著有诗集《赋形者》（2014 年）。散文集《在孟溪那边》（2017 年）。评论集《隔渊望着人们》（2016 年）、《始于一次分神》（2021 年）。译有《我曾这样寂寞生活：辛波斯卡诗选》（2014 年）、《鲍勃·迪伦诗歌集，1961-2012 年》（合译， 2017 年）、《染匠之手》（奥登随笔集，2018 年）、《生活研究： 洛威尔诗选》（2019 年）、《旧金山海湾幻景》（米沃什随笔集， 待出）等。现任教于同济大学中文系。