Anthology of Shen Haobo's poems in German and English
Prague Under Sunlight
The tank rolls over my chest.
Half of the world is rumbling
like drums.
It rolls over the bluestone streets.
Over the church spires.
Over the cross.
Over the sobbing clouds above the cross.
Over the bakeries.
Over the swelling, steaming hot dream.
Over youth.
Over the trees.
Over the lonely figure on Charles Bridge.
Over his windbreaker.
Over his love.
Over the sobbing clouds above him.
Over the girl in white gloves
dreaming to be a princess
in her horse-drawn carriage.
Over the bronze statue.
Over the cat reading philosophy in the café.
Over the lingering melancholy in the cat’s eyes.
Over the gloomy, low-hanging sobbing clouds.
Over the tears of the clouds.
Over the rain.
Over the calm but steadfast faces of girls.
Over the dead.
Over the souls resting here like cobbles.
Over the roses.
Over the pipe organ whimpering day and night.
Over the gloomy,
low-hanging clouds.
On a street corner in Prague,
an approaching child
held in his hand a chocolate tank
dripping with sweet syrup
that made my mind wander for a minute.
（Translated from the Chinese by Liang Yujing）
White-Snow Go Board
Once again
I return to chilling Beijing.
Seen from the plane,
Beijing
is covered with thin snow
like a
white go board.
Who plays the game with me?
No one.
We gaze at each other
above the board –
I and a blood-red ___set___ting sun.
（Translated from the Chinese by Liang Yujing）
SCHACHBRETT AUS SCHNEE
peking
kehrt wieder zurück in den frost
aus dem flugzeug seh ich
eine dünne weiße schicht
ein weißes
schachbrett
wer will mit mir spielen?
niemand
ich und die
blutrot sinkende sonne
über dem brett
starren einander an
11. November 2015
Über___set___zt von MW
Night of Hualien
A silent
night with sea breezes.
A broad,
empty highway.
A snail
crawls slowly.
A motorbike passes.
In its whizz
you can still hear
a
crack.
（Translated from the Chinese by Liang Yujing）
NACHT IN HUALIEN
stiller
wind vom meer streichelt die nacht
breite
menschenleere stra?e
eine schnecke
kriecht gem?chlich
ein motorrad
in seinem brausen
in seinem heulen
h?r ich
ein knacksen
13. Juni 2015
über___set___zt von MW am 1. Sept. 2015
Six Good Friends
At first there were Zhang One and Zhang Two.
Then Zhang One had a good friend, named Zhang Six.
Then Zhang One, Zhang Two made friends with Zhang Three and Zhang Four.
Coincidently, Zhang Three and Zhang Four were also Zhang Six’s friends.
Later on, Zhang One Zhang Two Zhang Three Zhang Four and Zhang Six
met Zhang Five together.
They all treated Zhang Five as a friend.
From then on, there were six good friends
called Zhang One Zhang Two Zhang Three Zhang Four Zhang Five and Zhang Six.
Zhang One was happy to have five so-good friends.
He boasted to others
that if blood is thicker than water,
then Our friendship is a blood relationship.
Zhang One Zhang Two Zhang Three Zhang Four Zhang Five and Zhang Six
stayed together every chance they got.
They talked a lot and laughed loud.
Or just laughed, without talking.
Together they ate, drank, played Mahjong, called names.
Zhang One Zhang Three Zhang Four Zhang Five and Zhang Six all liked to say “stupid”
except for Zhang Two
whose catchphrase was “fuck.”
One day, Zhang Six said to Zhang Two, “Stupid, do you have cigarettes?”
Staring at him, Zhang Two said, “Fuck!”
Then he took a knife, thrust it into Zhang Six’s thigh.
Blood spurted through his jeans,
all over the floor.
Zhang One Zhang Three Zhang Four and Zhang Five
were all scared stiff.
Only then did they notice
Zhang Two and Zhang Six
had never been good friends.
（Translated from the Chinese by Liang Yujing）
Ma Heling in Fact
In fact she’s a person waiting for death
the way hundreds of people do in this village.
In fact her husband is one already dead
just like all the other dead persons in this village.
In fact she hasn’t reconciled herself to dying in that way.
In fact she remarried less than a year after her husband’s death.
In fact the man who married her also had a newly dead wife.
In fact Ma Heling, now in her fifties,
still looks plump and handsome.
In fact she’s got AIDS that has started to affect her.
In fact there are hundreds of people waiting for death like her.
In fact the man who married her was a normal healthy guy.
In fact this guy had no choice but to marry an AIDS victim
if he still wanted a woman.
In fact it’s impossible for any healthy woman to marry
a man whose wife has just died of AIDS.
In fact death has ___set___tled down in this village,
collecting people without even giving notice.
In fact the village is done for, dying out.
In fact they are still alive.
In fact they have to live until they die.
In fact they have to do some living things before their death.
In fact the man who married her really wanted to marry her,
for he, in his prime, needed a woman; even though she,
in fact useless, could only sit there or
walk slowly with her hands tucked in her sleeves,
he still wanted to marry her.
In fact this woman can still spread her legs in bed.
In fact this woman still has plenty of flesh.
He does wish she’d never die so that every night
there would be a living woman lying in his bed.
In fact the village distributes condoms to every family.
In fact the man who married her never uses condoms.
In fact she once asked, Aren’t you afraid of getting infected Aren’t you
afraid of death?
In fact he is afraid of death,
while in fact he still doesn’t use condoms,
doesn’t think he’ll be so unfortunate, in fact in their village
almost all the men of his age have been unfortunate
but in fact they got infected by selling blood, in fact
the man who married her has never heard of anyone falling ill by fucking his wife.
In fact, to a peasant, fucking one’s wife with a rubber sheath –
that sounds in fact more fucking incredible than death.
Translator’s Note: Wenlou Village is one of China’s AIDS villages, due to a 1991-1995 plasmapheresis campaign by the Henan provincial government. According to official statistics, there are 38 such villages in Henan Province. Wenlou Village Accounts is a sequence of seven poems written by Shen Haobo after his visit to the village in the early 2000s.
（Translated from the Chinese by Liang Yujing）
The Death Issue in Our Place
Our place is a vast countryside
where crops, men and women grow
as well as their livestock.
In our place, many women commit suicide.
Some drink pesticide, some hang themselves.
Most of them choose to drink pesticide.
In our place, we don’t call that “commit suicide.”
We say “drink pesticide till death.”
Sometimes I admire the women who drink pesticide.
They, really unafraid of death,
move from “want to die” to “die”
without a moment’s thought.
They simply die.
Sometimes I admire the women who hang themselves.
They, who really understand the death issue,
have made up their minds to die
before hanging themselves.
In our place, we don’t call that “commit suicide” either.
We say “hang themselves till death.”
（Translated from the Chinese by Liang Yujing）
Something is happening in the darkness
There is something that I can’t see
any trace in daytime.
Only when she goes to sleep do I see
how sad she is—in her closed eyes.
The sadness in sleep
must be real sadness. I’m part of her
life in broad daylight but can’t enter her
sleep. I watch with my own eyes
how sad she is in her closed eyes
and I have no clue why she is sad.
Something is happening in the darkness
of her soul but I’m thrown out
into the light.
（Translated from the Chinese by Ming D）
300 POEMS, ALL WITH NOEVIL
Whatever Plato wanted to banish from his Republic
is exactly what Confucius culled from his Book of Songs.
When I suddenly thought of this point
I felt the hairs stand up on my neck.
“The Master didn’t speak of ghosts and demons."
All those strange beings, mysterious bodies, brave and resilientbeauties
culled clean from the books?
If it was really like that
then he must be my enemy, goddamn bastard executioner!
10/16/16
Tr. MW, Jan. 2017
AT THE CHAPEL OF ST. FRANCIS XAVIER
I like that kind of church,
rather small,
dignified, intimate.
The Chapel of St. Francis Xavier
at Wynn in Macau:
Wooden door, thin and long,
cuts the yellow wall right in half.
A butterfly’s wings,
bright and warm,
inviting me to step inside.
A sign at the door,
two lines in big letters,
from the New Testament:
“Jesus said,
I am the way, the truth and the life.”
I looked and thought,
and in my heart
I said to Jesus,
“I am sorry,
but I can’t agree.”