Five Poems by Yan An Translated into English by Ouyang Yu The Plane is Flying in the Blue of Despair Blue above Blue below In the limitless blue in which directions don’t even exist The plane seems to fly slowly The soundless and limitless blue That seems to almost put the trembling of the flight under control Manages only to make it shiver Causing the white sunlight to show the icy cold of a certain hardness In this blue quite nigh despair, the plane is flying As if across A vanity approaching extinction
Sleeping with a Mirror A white swan (perhaps just something white and plump) With its unreal whiteness In the autumnal Tianchi Sky Pond Further away than Xinjiang the New Boundary Is sleeping with a mirror A huge curved rock with its black moss And a big heap of white bird shit On the cliff above a big river In the wind of ancient times beneath the wings of a bird Trying to determine the posture of its flight Is sleeping with time A snake, that has shed its white skin in the forest (all this just being imagined) Chasing in vain a hungry tiger And, when lost on its way returning to its cave Is so fearful that it runs in haste As he has to rush to the wilderness To sleep with the dark clouds and the moon My father, with his white hair And his white bones under his black skin Tonight, in his dream of his home and my dream Where a white, cold light that is unplaceable And a certain sadness that is hard to describe Is sleeping with the crowd of mountains in the north Post Office Good fruit all shifted to the balcony Along with your berries that are the Eternal dreams of an animal called Sheep That come from the depths of an old forest Also shifted to the balcony it’s summer now It wouldn’t matter if it’s higher Or more eye-catching All I have is a sad cement balcony Which I may also lose But the sun, the water and The rebellious wind will come The thunder, lightning and meteors will come And restless friends will discuss in secret Another meeting After the summer My cement balcony is on the higher ground Looking down all those passionate about