Shui Yang
PROVISIONS
Most supermarkets
have just empty shelves.
Online
meat and vegetables
are hard to find.
Milk and eggs
whole wheat bread
also gone.
Turned out the freezer,
found a surprise, a few jiaozi.
That was from last fall,
mom and dad made them for us
before they went back to China.
Cooked our treasure,
carefully
tried a bite.
Carrot-celery-beef filling,
greatest stuff in the world,
never had
anything better.
3/17/20
Translated by MW, April 2020
Bai Li
DAMALS IM KALTEN WINTER
Damals in einer kalten Winternacht,
eisiger Wind
fegt durch die Ritzen der brüchigen Mauern.
Sie hält das Kind in seiner Decke
und streichelt die kleine magere Hand.
In der Nacht kommt ihr Mann
durch die schäbige Tür,
packt sie mit klammen Fingern und sagt voller Stolz:
Hast du Radio gehört?
Unser Land hat Atombomben!
Die Frau ruft laut mit leuchtenden Augen:
Wie viele kriegen wir dann zum Essen?
Übersetzt von MW im August 2019
Wu Cheng
1977
When I was born,
father went to the countryside to buy eggs
to nourish my mother.
On the way back
he ran into a roadblock set up by militia
who confiscated the eggs
to “cut off capitalist tails”.
Profiteering was strictly prohibited.
Father wouldn’t give up.
In that village
he looked up a distant relative,
asked him for help to get the eggs back.
The relative said
a militia man’s wife also just had her baby,
only half of the eggs could be given back.
Tr. MW, April 2017
HE
he is not here
for he is risen
he’s not here with us
with our eggs
in our nests
with our bunnies
maybe he is
in idomeni
somewhere on the road
let’s make austria strong
say the people
who seal the borders
MW March 2016
Feng Xuan
MINE WORKERS AND TEA EGGS
actually, they have
just finished their early shift
and found a noodle shop
to let their spent up bodies rest for a while
handmade noodles, two yuan fifty fen
they don’t want to pay any more for the sauce
only a tea-egg
colored much like their skin
happiness rolled into one
they keep the egg and the soup till the end
as if to remind themselves
not to let this darkness
pass into their wives’ pregnant bellies
Tr. MW, June 2014
