16th century | 中国大好き

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巴黎墓园 PERE LACHAISE

3月 13, 2025

Photo by Maja Linnemann

巴黎墓园

巴黎最著名的墓园
有很多外国人
有爱尔兰诗人作家
奥斯卡·王尔德
和美国歌手
吉姆·莫里森
有一些华人
外面墙上有在一战
死去巴黎人的名单
游客不少
我们碰到
英国中学生
他们德语不错
都喜欢足球
还学会了
专门词汇
种族歧视
墓园很文明
不过王尔德
坟墓的雕像
也受到破坏

2025.2

Photo by Maja Linnemannn

PERE LACHAISE

Last week I wrote a poem
after we walked in Père Lachaise,
the cemetery in Paris.
The one with the stars.

Like Abelard and Heloise.
Yeah, I didn’t know they were there.
There is a book with their letters.
They wrote in Latin.

Anyway we met students from England,
high-school students.

Their teachers had given them maps.
It was cold.
I shouldn’t have been outside.
I know that now.

Rasenvorurteile!
Ich liebe Fußball!
Yeah, they knew German,
some of it sounded quite good.

They were from Leicester,
at least some of them.
Rasen means lawn.
There is another rasen,
it means to rage.
Or also road rage.

But what they had learned was another word.
Race prejudice.
Rassenvorurteile.
Yeah, with two s.
Double s in the races.

Yeah, off to the races,
Hamsterwheel,
Lilo and Stitch.
That is a story
against prejudice,
more or less,
mostly harmless.

Abelard and Heloise
was a different story.
Not really for kids.
But yeah, rather deep,
like much in the cemetery.

There are Chinese graves.
One still had wreaths
from a recent burial.

My poem was in Chinese,
the one from last week.

In the end we found Oscar Wilde
or near the end.

The end was ashes
sprinkled on pieces of lawn
near the north exit.
Without prejudice,
hopefully,
but rather orderly.

There were stones to remember
very grave things
somewhere else.
There was one about Ruanda.

The north exit is near Belleville.
But we went straight home
to our friends’ apartment.
We were cold and tired.

Keep your eyes on the road
and your hands upon the wheel,
and may God protect you,
or whatever spirit.

It is a spiritual place.

MW March 2025

Photo by Maja Linnemann

标签：ashes, belief, believe, body, children, cold, contact, conversation, destruction, football, France, grass, health, high school, history, lawn, literature, massacre, memory, music, Oscar Wilde, Paris, people, prejudice, race, rocks, school, sex, soccer, spirit, spirits, sports, Stones, talk, traces, violence
发表在 11th century, 13th century, 14th century, 15th century, 16th century, 17th century, 1910s, 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, 2010s, 2020s, 2025, 20th century, 21st century, Antique times, February 2025, March 2025, March anytime, May bees, Middle Ages, poetry, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

broad

1月 25, 2025

Picture by Duan Weiguo

BROAD ALLIANCE

white trash in chief
felon in chief
big business in chief

and a lot in between

MW January 2025

direct message
deutschmarks
not really
drugs megamart
anything goes
as long as you’re friends
with musk

MW January 2025

标签：business, chiefs, crime, drugs, friends, market, message, spice, trash
发表在 11th century, 13th century, 14th century, 15th century, 16th century, 17th century, 18th century, 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 19th century, 2000s, 2010s, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2020s, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025, 20th century, 21st century, Antique times, December 2024, February 2025, First Emperor, January 2025, March 2025, March anytime, May bees, Middle Ages, November 2024, October 2024, poetry, September 2024, Warring States | Leave a Comment »

This is Austria’s National Day.
You can stand in line
for a rather long time
to look inside.
It feels rather hollow.
You knew that before.
Most people are friendly,
guarding the power.
Rooms are old and tall.
Imperial times
are very remote.
Everyone knows
something unspeakable
was in between.

MW October 26, 2024

国庆

奥地利国庆
可以去排队
等一段看见
政府楼里面
感觉很空洞
你早都知道
人都还善良
权利的保安
天花板高上
皇帝时代
现在很遥远
谁都知道
难说的事
就在中间

2024.10

标签：activities, austria, building, ceiling, corridor, emperor, emperors, empire, empress, empty, feeling, feelings, government, guard, guide, high, history, line, nation, national day, open, people, rooms, society, state, Vienna, waiting
发表在 11th century, 13th century, 14th century, 15th century, 16th century, 17th century, 1849, 1880s, 1890s, 18th century, 1900s, 1910s, 1918, 1920s, 1930s, 1938, 1940s, 1945, 1950s, 1955, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 19th century, 2000s, 2010s, 2020s, 2024, 20th century, 21st century, Antique times, Byzantinian times, Middle Ages, October 2024, poetry, Translations | Leave a Comment »

MILTON

10月 8, 2024

MILTON

Milton’s paradise
Milton’s Paradise Lost
Here comes Milton the monster.
You better be ready.
Milton studied at Cambridge.
Milton is a Category 5!
What is Milton used for?
Is Milton the same as bleach?
When the monarchy was restored in England in 1660,
Milton was imprisoned, but later pardoned.
He spent the rest of his life writing.
Is Milton an Indian brand?
Milton married in 1643 to Mary Powell,
but this marriage was deemed a disaster.
During this time Milton began writing about divorce
and the merits that came along with it.
These works were denounced by Parliament…
Why is Milton so popular?
What makes Milton so unique?
She would die in 1652 during childbirth
of one of his four offspring with her.
Not only would his only son also die that year,
but he would also lose his vision.
Can you put Milton on skin?
Can Ī rinse my mouth with Milton?
Eventually, John Milton would work for the English government
under Oliver Cromwell after the removal of the monarchy.
Milton offers a wide range of
Homeware & Kitchenware products which includes…
Milton would marry twice more in his lifetime.
With a wary eye on Milton,
we rank Miami’s Big 6 teams on exhilaration to angst scale
What are the side effects of Milton?

MW October 8, 2024 (Source: Google search “milton”)

and

https://sites.udel.edu/britlitwiki/john-milton/

标签：attention, biography, disaster, divorce, government, headlines, history, kitchen, life, loss, marriage, memory, mouth, paradise, parliament, people, poetry, politics, reading, research, scripture, search, search engine, searching, skin, sports, storm, warning, writing
发表在 16th century, 17th century, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 19th century, 2000s, 2010s, 2020s, 2024, 20th century, 21st century, Antique times, Han dynasty, Middle Ages, October 2024, poetry, Prehistoric times, Roman times, September 2024, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

CHARACTERS ON A FUSE BOX – 君儿 Jun Er – ZEICHEN AUF DEM STROMKASTEN

3月 14, 2024

Photos by Jun Er

Jun Er
CHARACTERS ON A FUSE BOX

On an old city street in Fengnan,
I saw a fuse box by the road.
It was painted in red.
In the middle of the paint,
there were two characters in black.
Very striking!
Framing them with my phone —
One stroke is rather feeble
in the second character of “freedom”.
But it can’t be ‘confession’!
Freedom is such a famous word.

Tr. MW, March 2024

Photos by Jun Er

电箱上的字
君儿

在丰南一条古街
见到一个路边电箱
箱体涂上了红色
油漆中间
有两个黑体字
十分醒目
手机定格出——
自由由字的一竖
写得很淡即使如此
也不会把它当成自白
自白怎么比得上
自由有名呢

Jun Er
ZEICHEN AUF DEM STROMKASTEN

In einer Altstadtgasse in Fengnan
seh ich am Rand einen Stromkasten.
Der ist rot lackiert.
In der Mitte
sind zwei schwarze Zeichen,
die fallen ins Auge.
Mit dem Handy festhalten –
beim zweiten Zeichen von “Freiheit”
ist ein Strich nur ganz schwach.
Sieht fast aus wie “Geständnis”.
Aber das kann es nicht sein,
Freiheit ist so berühmt!

Übersetzt von MW im März 2024

标签：characters, color, confession, electricity, freedom, history, Jun Er, Jun'er, meaning, memory, painting, picture, strokes, writing, 君儿
发表在 11th century, 13th century, 14th century, 15th century, 16th century, 17th century, 18th century, 1900s, 1910s, 1920s, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 19th century, 2000s, 2010s, 2020s, 2023, 2024, 20th century, 21st century, Antique times, December 2023, February 2024, January 2024, March 2024, Middle Ages, poetry, Qing Dynasty, Translations | Leave a Comment »

IN A PAWNSHOP OF PAIN – On the poet Nan Ren 南人

2月 27, 2024

Dear poetry fans,
On Febr. 10, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung published my article on the poet Nan Ren 南人 (scroll to p. 5; there are a few minor mistakes in the German article, I couldn’t see the final print version before it came out: the first poem has one line added; and Shaanxi became Shanxi). Last week I decided to write a version in English for the MCLC Resource Center.

This is a newspaper article, so there are no footnotes. The reference to Maghiel van Crevel was not included in the German print version. I have thought about many names of poets I should have mentioned, and other things I should have said. Anyway, such a publication in a major daily in Germany is a big success, a big deal in international exposure for current Chinese poetry. I hope you like it. Please comment, thank you!

Sources: Here is a link to the poems in the article including the original Chinese versions. And here are some of the paintings by Huang Li 黄丽 that accompany the poems in the book. The pictures look much better in the book. Nan Ren has sent them to me in high resolution. He and Xiron have authorized me to look for publishers in Europe and beyond. I hope to find publishers for the German speaking and for the English speaking Pawnshop. Here is a link to about 50 poems in Chinese with some translations in English or German. Here is a link to the announcement from last May, when the book was published in China. The publisher is Xiron Poetry Club, 磨铁读诗会. Xiron is a big publisher, led by the poet Shen Haobo 沈浩波. But Xiron is private and has to purchase an ISBN for each book from a state publisher. The state publisher is on the cover, Xiron Poetry Club is on the first page. Both have to avoid publishing anything that could get the book pulled or forbidden.

IN A PAWNSHOP OF PAIN

Nan Ren is a legend. He doesn’t like to say when he was born. 1970, found that somewhere. Not important. Nan Ren is a pen name. The nán of ‘south‘ and the rén of ‘person‘. What does that mean? His family comes from the south, somewhere south of the Long River, the Yangtse. Nanren, southern people, was the lowest stratum in the Mongol empire. The Mongols captured the south last, all the better jobs had been assigned to other people already. Almost every poet writing in Chinese has a pen name. People have more than one name in Chinese, even non-artists. It was that way in Confucius‘ times. And in the occident, people also had several names, at least prominent people, all the way from Homer.

More …

标签：beijing, book, books, censorship, 磨铁, 磨铁读诗会, Democracy Wall, disease, Europe, 西毒何殇, Fang Miaohong, FAZ, frankfurt, Germany, history, internet, Maghiel van Crevel, MCLC, media, memory, name, names, Nan Ren, newspaper, opera, pandemic, people, poetry, publishing, reality, self censorship, Shen Haobo, singing, society, time, wall, walls, writing, Xi'an, Xidu Heshang, Zhu Jian, 南人, 尹丽川, 方妙红, 朱剑, 椿树, 沈浩波
发表在 11th century, 13th century, 14th century, 15th century, 16th century, 17th century, 18th century, 1900s, 1910s, 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 19th century, 2000s, 2010s, 2020s, 2023, 2024, 20th century, 21st century, April 2023, February 2024, May 2023, Middle Ages, poetry, Song Dynasty, Translations | Leave a Comment »

schlafnymphe – 陈兴 Chen Xing

11月 14, 2023

陈兴
现代诗八首

Chen Xing
SCHLAFNYMPHE

Herbstnacht am Teich,
Seerose fehlt.
Ist wohl verschlafen
versunken.
Hab sie nicht rausgefischt,
um nachzusehen.