王行水[湖南] 溆浦院子（组诗）【中英对照，马婷婷 译】

Wang Xingshui [Hunan]

The Courtyard of Xupu (group poems)

Going Home: The Courtyard of Xupu

Having stepped out of a mountain

One can never return

Having waded through a stream

One can never go back

People hustle and bustle around for a living

Even to places farther and farther

Even to the end of the world

Yet in their hearts and minds

They are always

And forever on the way home

The courtyard of Xupu is something like my hometown

With my heart left under its eave

And my root under the waxberry tree before the gate

The swing under the waxberry tree

Is still rippling with my childhood dream

The wood-fired stove in the room corner without a roof above

Is still busy with the past country life chores

I’ve dreamed a lot in my life

But perhaps still haven’t woken up from my childhood dream

I’m growing old together with my hometown

While recollections of the youth

Are still vividly passing by in front of my eyes

It is the hillside

The winding flagstone road

The plain local accent

The permeating homesickness that I cannot forget

My tears and laughter are condensed in the courtyard of Xupu

The pain of growth as well as love and sorrows are also collected there

My poems, songs, and all my writings

Are walking playfully in line into the courtyard of Xupu

An old buffalo emerges from the opposite bamboo grove

With its low and deep mooing

I get red-eyed

For it sounds to me like

My old mom and my dad who has passed away

Are calling me home for dinner and homework

The Courtyard of Xupu, My Hometown

All dreams are bound to an end

Except the courtyard of Xupu

A dream of mine that will never end

Throughout one’s life

The most successful thing

Is no more than walking

On the way home

The courtyard, with white shirttails fluttering in wind

Like the grey-haired

Standing in front of the gate

Is always there

Calling his kids back home

Maybe it’s been many years since you left home

Striving for a better life far away, suffering from exhaustion

To have a look at the clouds in the hometown

To visit parents in the hometown

A return ticket in one’s life

Is a journey back to hometown

Many a man

Only fixes their eyes upon petty profit

But who is the solitude one walking by

Just like the floating bridge over the Xushui River

With Qu Yuan’s figure passing through

What is the matter if two thousand years have already passed?

I’m still standing by the river

Counting the sceneries carefully

I dreamed of Qu Yuan

And of reproducing the courtyard of Xupu

Stubbornly

Qu Yuan had been writing verses to music all his life

The road was so long and so was his yearning

He was indeed bearing toil

It was fortunate to have the dragon boats and Xupu geese there

All the time for Dragon Boat Festivals and river-crossing

On the other side of the river, in the center of the water

The Tongxi River unified all the streams and rivers

Everyone agreed to

Build the courtyard of Xupu on the flat

For the far-away

Shared missing and eternal distant gazing of each other

Taking mountains and rivers as my brothers

In the long roaring towards the sky from time to time

I recognize myself

and my shadow

Which are left in the courtyard of Xupu

Waiting for the courtyard of Xupu

Looking into Distance While Sitting in the Courtyard of Xupu

How many streams and rivers has the Tongxi River unified

Looking into the distance while sitting in the courtyard of Xupu

I can see everything clearly

With waves upon waves of mountains

Huddling around to watch

Villages at the foot of the mountain look like the ones dropping from the sky

Firecrackers are crackling for the happy events of some household

Valleys echo with congratulations

Fresh air makes the bamboo grove smile

White geese and mallards are having fun under the pine trees

Ignoring the waiting of the old fire-wood stove

Totally

When wild roses climb up to the wooden fence

Under the waxberry tree before the yard, a heart of romance

Begins to play on the wings relaxedly

Rape flowers turn yellow and corns green

Broad beans and peas paint half the mountain slope green

Mist in the mountain murmuring affection to the blue sky gently

Flagstone roads are winding to explore

Through the window glass into the bright cabin

Under the curtain of reeds, there is a set of karaoke equipment

Tatami and beanbag chair are chatting, half-lying

A glass of scented tea has seen through my secret

That I will drink with the courtyard of Xupu till we are both drunken

The Courtyard of Xupu

Like a verse drifting on the col

Confirming its own identity

With deep root

It has riveted the old times

As well as the Chinese style in the old times

In my dream of returning home

Modern citizens who aspire to regain the pastoral life

Enter into it in endless crowds

In the courtyard of Xupu

They scatter and disappear like mist

Picking mushrooms on the slopes

Carrying hoes to dig sweet potatoes

Following the monkeys to pick the corns

Beside the fire-wood stove

Cooking a meal for their beloved

So fresh and appealing

Swinging under the old waxberry tree

Arouses the jealousy of clouds

Diversified choices are provided here

An Arcadia it is

A Pretty girl happily

Flees into the wood like a white fox

A penalty to her wooer

Who suffers in Pu Songling’s ghost stories

I calm my pounding heart down

Cruising back and forth around the fence

Pretending to read attentively

The Spring in the Courtyard of Xupu

Lingering in the deep of time

The courtyard of Xupu is beaming with the brilliance of spring

Spring flowers are in full blossom

Grass and trees are all in green

Wild roses climb up to the wooden fences

Bees and butterflies are dancing on the bamboo hedges

If desired, breeze will soon come to tap on your window

If expected, drizzle will soon drift agley down on the roof

The sunshine is also lazily

Accompanying the courtyard dozing in the bygones

The courtyard of Xupu is half-lying in the col

Neither too high nor too low

Just suitable for the nostalgia of the travelers far away from home

with their gazing or looking back

On the winding flagstone path

Sometimes upwards, sometimes downwards

Though sceneries are different

Feelings are the same as the those of childhood

Vegetable fields grow, prosper, and wither year in, year out

Chickens, ducks and geese come and go

The calling of turtledoves and the charming figure of the white fox

Flicker in the opposite bamboo wood time and again

Bamboo shoots in spring and winter exchange their fields for many times

Leaving only the old wood-fired stove in the room corner without a roof above

Still singing about the ageless smoke drifting from kitchen chimneys

The swing under the waxberry tree in front of the gate

Is still swaying today and recalling yesterday and the day before yesterday repeatedly

If I had encountered you in my previous life or this present life

We would have had nowhere to go except the courtyard of Xupu

Which has already dwelt in my heart and integrated into my blood

Beaming with brilliance in my bone-deep sense through times

      （Tr. Ma Tingting；马婷婷 译）

作者简介：

王行水，中国当代诗人，笔名三都河。上世纪八十年代初期开始业余诗歌创作，迄今已在《人民文学》《青年文学》《星星诗刊》《诗歌月刊》等报刊发表诗歌数百首，作品入选《中国诗歌十年》《中国当代实力诗人诗选》等多种选本，并获得多项全国性文学艺术作品大赛奖。已出版《泛舟长河》《梦幻夜郎》《伴雪起舞》等多部诗集。现为湖南省诗歌学会常务理事，中国作家协会会员。

About the Author:

Wang Xingshui is a contemporary Chinese poet whose penname is Sandu He (Sandu River). He began his poetry creation in the early 1980s and has published hundreds of poems in newspapers and magazines such as People’s Literature, Youth Literature, The Star Poetry Monthly and Poetry Monthly. His poems have found their way into several selections such as Ten Years of Chinese Poetry and Selected Poems of Contemporary Chinese Powerful Poets. He has published several anthologies of poetry: Boating on the Long River, Yelang in Fantasy and Dance to Snowflakes. Wang Xingshui is the standing director of Hunan Poetry Society, a member of Chinese Writers Association.