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Issue #1 Winter 2002

Road

(Van Gogh: Road with Cypresses, 1890)

by Xue Di

(translated by Wang Ping & Keith Waldrop)

The workers are coming.  Their blurred faces

impress on me the hardship of creation

Locate the roots of things

My breath flows through those roots

as if the flames of my whole body

surged up a cypress standing tall

 

Like a road twisting in the soul’s uncertainty

Pale shell.  Crying of wheat unsown

The human “past” shrill in the moonlight

Seeds sleeping in despair.  The “future”

a good horse.  Where the road is

open, perfect necks break with the strain

 

 

Still the bones of the cypress spit flames

From each drop of resin a squatting beast

vaults into the night, roars out starry

stars.  Night is his vibrating gong

His claws rake human faces

 

©1995 Xue Di

 

Vincent Van Gogh, Road with Cypresses, 1890
Oil on Canvas, 92 x 73 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.

 
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