May '02 [Home] Poems on Paintings: Xue Di Excerpts from Flames (Poems Dedicated to Vincent Van Gogh) Translated by Keith Waldrop with Wang Ping TheField Covered With Crows Church Starry Night Drawbridge White Chinese Roses Sunflower Tonight Blues THE FIELD COVERED WITH CROWS (van Gogh: "Wheat Field with Crows," 1890) Waves of yellow wheat cry in my throat I stand on the heights Everything ripens! Seeds tremble in the storm singing towards the death-house. Crows messengers of the abyss, wings with the gleam of lilies. I come. I walk My loneliness is like crystal Who listens to my voice in poverty gives me his hand, sustaining me My sadness is a mirror glistening in obscure human faces I give up art, renounce religion I stand on the heights. Gazing at the past is like staring down an abyss of animal lairs like casting my whole life into a battle with beauty The spear of fantasy tilts at my throat The fields are ripe. In ominous presentiment crows, from my feet soar up through my veins O pure wheat seven pair of silver forks stab into your pit The storm carries you back —far away, a bright nothing trembles in stone as far as eye can see I come. I'm lost outside the weakness of art. What can undo the crime of humans who insult the soul On the heights —the gate of death trembles over autumn waters The sky folds, like a compressed spring My heart! Look again at the fields. Grasp them as if grasping the maelstrom that swallows up your love. Cry that you love it is the peak of death The loner grows fruit-bearing limbs Cry! Cry, brother, towards the nothing, crows circling over crops, cawing their cry to mankind Wheat Field with Crows: View CHURCH (van Gogh: "The Church at Auvers," 1890) Sacred music unsounding I stare at you flowers, roots of the grass. A woman defaced I stand before the true altar listening ever for the voice of gods Weeds everywhere the neigh of pursuing horses My life of devotion ignorant of evil At sight of the mute solemn stone my heart begins to bleed Teach us how to love Facing earth's molesters facing the furious dying father He has cleft the place that oppressed him with darkness Tell us! how can we unfurl into the day the banner of joyous purple fir Birds and we embrace Buildings stand erect. Lionesses bless herbivores Babies kick in the bellies of men like rivers on a rampage dividing the land Holy spring! In my blood there's an altar-stone onto which music descends Worship! Soil, petals of glass the pinnacle! There my heart registers simple songs of the sky All things on earth revive ten thousand times from death Now, my heart, pray for them all Church at Auvers: View STARRY NIGHT (van Gogh: "The Starry Night," 1889) Evening is a trembling amber People, tiny insects curl up in the horseshoe-shaped air Language calls out in the dark Who is it races the fear in our souls to describe the distant light to open the constellations, flames licking the sky With a strength that crosses village and cypress I call out to Nature: I'm in pain Brother, give me your hand Two animal claws will come to grips My poem, the roaring of wounded animals The sky's giant teeth gleam over mountaintops exposed Love is at war, a bird flies high and changes his feathers as the river suddenly divides Ah, what kind of drum will stretch your skin and mine Blood flows through evening sand Our creativity is the drummer grimly tapping out our hearts In the deserted night we hear them howling at our dream of life Starry Night: View DRAWBRIDGE (van Gogh: "The Langlois Bridge," 1888) Bright pure water one side of the ferry hidden in reeds The boatman's hand brushes catkins magpie calls from the corolla A sunny day. Birds shiver Young women gather at the riverside their wash-sticks like flower stems unfolding on the smooth stones The river ambles Bristly thistles drowse day long pheasants scout out their house and stick tail-feathers in the donkey's bells Who's in there chewing olive leaves lying in the dark shade of the cypress' belly Eyes that are covered by water chestnuts chat with summer as it sports in the river water Blue quivers in a cat's eyes Noon expands the exquisite silk Who's in there, pale of face, biting the roots of reeds agape at the delicate frame of the distant drawbridge A carriage ticks in the sun's pendulum Trembling, he presses his heart too overcome to speak a word facing the boundless peace and silence Holy day of sun the present of grape juice from your lover Your heart leaps with a string nailed in memory The lotuses in a music reach out, hands under the field to smooth away the pain of your life give you calm and let you lie at ease on the open wing of a dahlia Cruel! Brief happy time Langlois Bridge: View WHITE CHINESE ROSES (van Gogh: "White Roses," 1890) Flowers bloom in the house. Milk shines on leaves. Amid a cry of nightingales my wife holds out the corolla of her hands Rose! Chinese rose! Tell me when did I lose my peace Cotton crosses the surface of the vase Lambs gambol on tree tops. My daughter lies among the bush's roots Her nails, sharp thorns from the dark, make my heart howl in nightmare nightlong. Chinese rose! Chinese rose! Tell me where did I lose my happiness Songs spin on my forehead Deep beauty! Gold claws throw life into the abyss of pain My love opens in brief summer like injured feelings in final battle with the death of land Rose! Chinese rose! Roses burst in my chest. Tell me when will those who begin to understand remember me in delirium and forgive the dying SUNFLOWER (van Gogh: "Sunflowers," 1888) Sunflower claws walk the earth across starving stones A light, a call a face full of seeds shouting to get nearer the sun The face unfolds in pain proud tolerance A sharp flame burns at the sun's throat Sun! I feel from beneath my feet your rising power and your madness penetrating my skull! A bright drill cuts open my skin A hundred of my hot-tempered hearts rush towards you life upright on the wings of a giant beast cutting the dark with a wheel of light Here is your palace Oleander, pomegranate, cypress in a throng of gray mice alive and satisfied Stags sparkle. In the pain of struggle I'm granted a favor and my life is established on the land extolled by those I love. My head held high to hold the sun before I break Yellow! color of dreams Light with a rolling tongue takes over my words and my pulse Sky fortissimo among opening sunflowers Life! sun where my father lives secluded Flame! surrounding me beholding my glory burning me suddenly from inside My heart, contorted in chasing you sings furiously, shackled in blood Sunflowers:View TONIGHT (van Gogh: "Starry Night over the Rhône," 1888) Rock, September! A dark-skinned child lights the lamp in the tower Its golden orange shines at the moon Rock, September! Tap on your water jar in the evening breeze My days are filled with secrets But when? Can I make those I love understand my wishes by describing the chrysanthemum's pistil My brow is covered with candles Trumpets bend towards happiness trumpeting my joy to the peaceable Rhône Love me! the Rhône where antlers disappear. Stars shine out above me Songs from happy lips as this wine jar of tonight's sky tilts towards my delight Love me, September! Rock Rock me with tripod feet Shake me with the warm charm of your glaze The dark-skinned boy is going home to the river Tonight, my heart, here you will feel no pain, no loneliness BLUES (van Gogh: "The Night Café," 1888) The hand stirring coffee in obscure night tugs at the shirt of some passerby Light is like a moth fluttering. In the berry's pit the claw of the beast moves Before sleeping he pours blood down his raw throat Night, I hear you bawl into the mike "Not a thing in the world to do—drop your drawers, baby" Human beings sit on chairs tread on plants, looking stern Clocks tick off numbers of insulted souls The mike in the neck sings madly out "Dark heart, dark night and my lover, the well-known card-sharp" Homeless. Loiterers scratch their faces, echo the song Derelict! displays animal skin in the warm night, showing off magnificent houses Pines tremble in the shiver of souls beasts pass in mobs, not daring to look back I feel fear on distant lands Seed is buried all about me The waiter faces me, eyes at a loss A man out cold hangs on to a shark's fin navigating a caffeine fantasy The coffee shop sings hoarsely in my ear Babies cry their unfortunate destinies Ancestors panic in the very stones Shall we simply throw this land away Artists: sad and poor, you have only poetry, bright sunlight the music that turns people inward to themselves! Nothing else to cling to The Night Café: View Xue Di was born in Beijing in 1957. His published works include An Ordinary Day, Circumstances, Heart Into Soil, Flames, Trembling, and Dream Talk. Xue Di is a two-time recipient of the Hellman/Hammett Award. Since shortly after the Tienanmen Square Massacre in 1989, he has been a fellow in Brown Universityıs Freedom to Write Program in Providence, Rhode Island. |