Biography
柏桦,1956年1月出生于重庆。1982年,大学毕业后,辗转于多所大学教书。1992年,辞去教职,成为自由撰稿人。2004年,再入大学,现为:西南交通大学艺术与传播学院中文系教授。
Considered the central literary figure of the post-Obscure (post-“Misty”) poetry movement during the 1980s, BAI HUA ( 柏桦 ) was born in Chongqing in 1956. After graduating from Guangzhou Foreign Language Institute in 1982, he taught at various universities before working as an independent writer in 1992. He returned to teaching in 2004 and currently serves as a professor at Southwest Jiaotong University in Sichuan.
FIONA SZE-LORRAIN (Greta Aart) is an editor of Cerise Press.
广陵散 / Ancient Tune of Guangling
BY Bai Hua
TRANSLATED BY Fiona Sze-Lorrain
I
A youth slides off towards the abyss
followed by another
Bliss is soon outmoded
A boy writes a verse
Alas, a verse, just a verse
Twenty-four bridges in a moonlit night
II
Winter in the south
scatters your thoughts, they can’t find a theme
Bacon, Geyuan Garden, Shanghai folks
a tour guide is steaming with enthusiasm
Photo, photo
His frozen red face is smiling
February 1993
选择 / Choice
BY Bai Hua
TRANSLATED BY Fiona Sze-Lorrain
He wants to go to Kenya, he wants to go to Mexico
He wants to go to Jiangsu International Company
When young, we shrieked wildly in rules
Today, we learn to breathe in rules
O, how difficult, please don’t fight!
Let me start practising from the beginning
One two three, one two three, one two three
What exactly are these
Kenya, Mexico, Jiangsu International Company
This is poetry, please choose, this is all poetry
February 1993
爱的运动 / Love Campaign
BY Bai Hua
TRANSLATED BY Fiona Sze-Lorrain
Cars speed by
That is a love campaign
my campaign, campaign by a dwarf, youth and wind
The dwarf who speaks softly at this instant
needs full-scale precision
Illness has thrown him into the love of wine
But cars have stopped
But youth and wind can’t make the dwarf taller
But I’m confronting this
December 11, 1990
三月 / March
BY Bai Hua
TRANSLATED BY Fiona Sze-Lorrain
speechless moon
a speechless badge
the radical spring ripens inch by inch
new running water replaces old tongue
now we need to clarify
clarify the rainy sky and birds in retreat
clarify why another wind
invades us
like truth
pure is remorse, the remains of sleep
bitter spring dreams
deprive us of our ardent riders
only the street, flourishing
gallops by the ear
a boundless wind that says
you must abandon
you must remember
every old man every child
Spring 1985