Issue #1 Winter 2002
Church
(Van Gogh: "The Church at Auvers," 1890)
by Xue Di
(translated by Wang Ping & Keith Waldrop)
 |
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 |
©1995 Xue Di
Vincent Van Gogh, The Church at Auvers, 1890
Oil on Canvas, 94 x 74 cm
Xue Di was born in Beijing in 1957. He is the author of three volumes of
collected works in Chinese. In English translation, he
has published four books: An
Ordinary Day, Circumstances, Heart
into Soil, and Flames. His work has appeared in numerous American
journals and anthologies. Xue Di's work has been translated into English,
French, German, Dutch, Spanish, and Japanese. Since shortly after the Tiananmen
Square Massacre in 1989, he has been a fellow in Brown University's Freedom to
Write Program in Providence, Rhode Island. Xue Di is a two-time recipient of the
Hellman/Hammett Award, sponsored by Human Rights Watch.