A Poem by Chen Xianfa

Qingming Day: Passing the Lamp

In memory of my father

Let’s just say that every single drop of blood
running through my body
could be traced to a source.
Leaning against the flanks of a qilin,
the man who bequeathed me this drop of blood
out of nothingness,
is now buried deep in the desolate hillside.
I have lit a lamp for him.
This light and what is to be discovered
in the language of grief:
my prayer flags are composed of my own poverty.
I name no names in my lamentations
but I do distinguish between dust and earth.
And the tears and desires of all mankind
will never be exhausted
on account of this distinction.
Stowed away in the hunger and thirst of the qilin,
I will die and then I will return
from every word I have ever written
to witness the light of this unfailing lamp.

Translated by Martyn Crucefix and Nancy Feng Liang

Chen Xianfa is a poet, essayist and journalist born in Anhui Province, China, where he still lives. He has published four books of poems: Death in the Spring (1994), Past Life (2005), Engraving the Tombstone (2011), and Poems in Nines (2018), which was awarded the Lu Xun Literature Prize. A Selected Poems appeared in 2019. He has published two collections of essays, Heichiba Notes (2014 and 2021). Other awards include China’s Top Ten Influential Poets (1998-2008), the Hainan Biennial Poetry Prize (2011), Yuan Kejia Poetry Prize (2013), Tian Wen Poetry Prize (2015), and the Chenzi’ang Poetry Prize (2016).

Martyn Crucefix’s Between a Drowning Man (2023) is published by Salt. Other recent publications: Cargo of Limbs (Hercules Editions, 2019); These Numbered Days, translations of Peter Huchel (Shearsman, 2019) won the Schlegel-Tieck Translation Prize, 2020; translations of essays by Lutz Seiler, In Case of Loss, is published by And Other Stories (2023). A Rilke selected, Change Your Life: Essential Poems, is published by Pushkin Press (2024). Blog and website at http://www.martyncrucefix.com

Nancy Feng Liang is a bilingual poet and translator living in Massachusetts and North Carolina. She has translated Henry David Thoreau’s Wild Fruits into Chinese (published by China’s Culture and Development Press in 2018) and Chen Xianfa's Poems in Nines (published in China by Anhui Education Press, 2018). Her most recent poetry collection, Qi Cun Tie, was published by Taiwan Showwe Press, 2020. She graduated from Harvard University with a Master’s degree in 2004.