The Impossible Xu Zhimo

Last night, I briefly glanced through some of the poems of Xu Zhimo forming the last part of last Saturday's acquisition. I wanted to kick myself. How could I have ignored this wonderful modern Chinese poet for such a long time! If I were a Frenchman, I would have thrown up both my hands, shake my head, lift my face towards the ceiling and say "Impossible!" If I were a Spaniard, I would have looked at myself in the mirror, point my index finger to the face in that mirror and sway it from side to side and shaking my head at the same time and say, "Increible!"

Looking at poem after poem quickly, one thing struck me with almost the force of a sledge hammer, Xu is such a spontaneously sensuous poet! I have seldom seen any other poet writing like him. Perhaps they were constrained by considerations of decorum and good form. But certainly not him. All he sees are images, images, images and dialogues or monologues which would gush out one after another from that fountain of inspiration which is his head, at an incredible speed and all he would do is simply to write them down as and when they come, as if they were writing themselves! I do not know if it actually happened like that. But that is my impression as my eyes roamed over those rows and rows of print in longer or shorter lines on those pages which I turned.  I'm so happy I found him. My heart is throbbing with the excitement of anticipation at the prospect of being able to read him at a more civilized speed and to savour the beauty of his words and putting myself imaginatively into his position as he wrote them, with a good cup of freshly brewed coffee at my side.  What delight!

I shall choose at random the first short poem that I find to translate because of the constraint of time for my self-imposed target of a blog a day. I shall introduce his longer poems when I have more time over the weekend. So without further ado, here is the first one, chosen as I said, entirely randomly: the Coral

              珊湖                                                Coral

你再不用想我說活               You can't expect me to speak any more

  我的心早沈在海水底下； My heart has long sunk beneath the sea water ;             

你再不用向我叫喚：              You don't call out to me any more

   因為我－我再不能回答！        Because I--I can't reply!           

除非你－徐非你也來              Unless you--unless you come too

   這珊瑚骨環繞的又一世界； Into this other world surrounded by coral bones;  

等海風定時的一刻清靜，I'm waiting for the moment of that regular lull in the sea breeze

   你我來交互你我的幽歎。 to exchange with one another our tucked away sighs.

 

In this poem, Xu is apparently talking about his inability to speak to his lover during a visit to the tropical coral sea when he was engrossed in the beautiful undersea world of brightly colored and lively coral fishes weaving in and out of the corals and wafting sea weeds with the reflected light of the sun as a moving screen of light from the underside of the surface of the water above, during one of his skin diving trips. He imitates the way that he was speaking while he was just coming up for air by breaking up the rhythm of his speech by his inability to continue saying what he was about to say in one breath. Is that sigh a sigh to express his inability to instantly communicate with her?