【海外詩粹】袁昌明雙語詩選《思想獵人》

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刊 首 語

 

袁昌明的詩在大陸詩壇鮮為人知
但他的作品在「Writer and Poetry」 
「Poetry in Voice」和 「America Literature Series」等
有影響力的北美文學叢書和詩刊中屢屢可見
他主辦的詩網Poetry Pacific沒有中文
在他移居溫哥華將近40年中
英語已成為他生活中的第一語言
讀他的詩，已全然看不出
英語與母語之間生硬切換的痕跡。
他寫詩，對詩韻metre的把控非常嚴謹
尤其是重音foot和末韻rhyme
即便是外行，也能從他的詩中讀到
英文詩境中完美的古典主義
但他的詩歌表達卻並不陳舊老套
比如他在自由體十四行｜碎片化中寫道：
“去把意識壓縮成一個文檔， 然後將其上傳
到納米芯片上。去 過完白天，去死”
我不知道在創作此首詩歌時
詩人是否受到伊隆馬斯克Neuralink
人體腦機接口的啟發
不管怎樣，詩意的前瞻性足以令我們
對自身，對生死有了新的理解和定義

在現實中，他說他是個很“怯生”的人
除了埋頭寫作，不曾加入任何詩群
也少有參加網上詩歌交流互動
也許這也是他的詩，流於小眾的原因之一
但他對回歸母語寫作的迫切
卻時時躍然紙上，正如他在
「有關可塑性的思考」中寫到的：
“雖然我用英語寫作， 但注定
總是喜歡講普通話，即使我新近
在科學，民主和人權的潮流中
受過洗，我會正如我的兒子們一樣，與
我父親的單倍群雷同。不管
我們怎樣認同自己或被他人認同。”

-Vivian雯-

Yuan Changming’ Selected Poems

To recollect  all the pasts, and mix them together like a glass of cocktail——

自由體十四行詩外一首：碎片化
 
是生 為某一並不產生疑問的事情
還是死 於其實無關緊要的特定問題
去 與直蹲在荊州城附近洪湖里的
荷葉之上的 青蛙一道歌唱
去 回顧所有的過去，並將其調和
就像一杯 雞尾酒一樣
去 在兩根折斷的乾坤樹枝之間
築起 意義的鳥巢
去 爭取神性
長壽 甚至
還有幸福
去時不時地上線、下線

去把意識壓縮成一個文檔， 然後將其上傳
到納米芯片上。去 過完白天，去 死。

 Fragmentising: Another Free Sonnet

To be                   a matter when there’s no question
Or not to be           a question when nothing really matters
To sing                       with a frog squatting straight
On a lotus leaf in the Honghu Lake near Jingzhou
To recollect                       all the pasts, and mix them
Together like a glass of                   cocktail
To build                                  a nest of meaning
Between two broken branches on                 Ygdrasil
To strive           for deity
Longevity                       and
Even happiness
To come on and off line every other while
To compress consciousness into a file, and upload it
Onto a nanochip. To be          daying, to         die

Your body may be soaked deep, but your heart can roam Like a synchronous satellite——

追求

在一半是黑暗的世界
我的軀體在惡夢中
浸泡，腐爛

而我的心
卻像同步衛星那樣
在高空翺翔
把長夜遠遠甩在身後

是的，只要我的心飛得夠高夠快
我就會永享光明

Pursuing

In a world always half in darkness
Your body may be soaked deep
In a nightmare, rotting
But your heart can roam
Like a synchronous satellite
In the outer space, leaving
The long night far behind
As long as your heart flies fast
And high enough, you will live
A life of light forever

Nothing to kiss, nothing to talk about except some——

罌粟花

每朵都是
一對中間割破的
圓唇
在秋風中
淌著鮮血

無以為吻
無人與說
除了些許對穿著血裙的
過去的回憶
濃濃塗抹在
心胸附近

Poppies

Each is a pair
Of round lips
Cut right in the middle
Bleeding boldly
Against the autumn wind

Nothing to kiss
Nothing to talk about
Except some tender recollections
Of blood-skirted pasts
Painted thickly
Close to the heart

He comes down all the way just to tell you, his little secret——

我的烏鴉

你瞥見的每只烏鴉
都有顆半白的靈魂
它以前的棲身處是
你最直系的一位祖先

它不遠萬里飛來，只是要告訴你
它的一個小小秘密，它如何飛出
黑暗，它的心身如何充滿陰影，以及
它作為叛逆者不受歡迎的膚色

在你自己的心中也有一只烏鴉
比它的精神更黑
但比其羽毛更淡

My Crow

Each crow you have seen
Has a quasi white soul
That used to dwell in the body
Of one of your closest ancestors

He comes down all the way just to tell you
His little secret, the way he has flown out
Of darkness, the fact both his body and heart
Are filled with shadows, the truth about
Being a dissident, that unwanted color

Hidden in your own heart is there also a crow
Much blacker than his spirits
But less so than his feathers

You seek eternity in the blank while i am lost——

觀賞者與畫家

在靈動飛舞的筆尖
與巍然矗立的高山
之間， 一個在空白處
獲得永生，一個在濃墨前
失去自我

The Painter and the Viewer
 
between your brush tip
and mountain top
you seek eternity in the blank
while i am lost
among thick patches of ink 

Put your palm against the trunk, like a lover’s tongue——

幸福感應

你沒有自己的庭院
公園里遊人太多
就在附近隨便找棵樹吧
（每一棵都是那麽獨特優美）
用手掌抵著樹幹
就像情人伸出舌頭
給愛人一個裸露的深吻
感覺到了麽?
春天的信息在樹身里奔騰
只需靜靜地站立片刻
目光對視
你就會與大自然
融為一體

Telepathy of Happiness

You do not have your own garden
While the park is too overcrowded with visitors
Then, randomly choose a tree nearby
(Each one is so unique and beautiful)
Put your palm against the trunk
Like a lover’s tongue
And give it a naked kiss
Are your feeling it?
Spring is galloping in the trunk
All you need to do is just to stand quietly for a moment
With a close eye contact
And you will become one and same
With nature

Swarms of baby bees, attracted to the head of every sugar cane——

高梁

一簇簇幼小的蜜蜂
聚集在一株株甘蔗枝頭
忙著吸吮大地母親的糖分
或為雨天儲藏陽光

遠在晚夏的田野之外
高高列隊於黃昏之上
仿佛要迎接新月的檢閱
像紅紅的蘆葦
含著紅紅的種子

Sorghum

Swarms of baby bees
Attracted to the head of every sugar cane
All busy sucking the sweet from mother earth
Or collecting sunlight for a rainy day

Far beyond the fields of late summer
They stand tall above evening arrays  
As if to salute the new crescent moon
Like red reeds, with red seeds 

It is a landscape newly relocated into my heart’s backyard——

故土遊

無聊之際，我為打发時間
在平板電腦上
觀賞一幅傳統的國畫

因為放大了很多，看起來就像
是在一張普普通通的宣紙上
塗的墨水。我

在盆景面前觀畫；在
歷史的地板上粗粗摔下幾筆
又在沙发後面

留下幾許精細的線條
但未能在黑白之間
抓住任何無色的角落

這是新近搬遷到
我內心後院的景觀。然後
我盤起雙腿打坐，冥想著

畫中沒有光線，無論什麽
都沒有陰影，就像在地獄一樣
也沒有視角。這豈不就是看的藝術？

Homelanding

Having nothing better to do, I kill
Time by looking at a traditional
Chinese painting on my iPad

Much enlarged, it appears like
A plain sheet of rice paper
Smeared with ink. I view it

In the presence of bonsai; I
Drop several thick strokes to the floor
Of history, leaving a few fine lines

Behind the sofa, & failing
To catch a colorless corner
Between black and white

It is a landscape newly relocated
Into my heart’s backyard. Then I sit
On my legs, meditating about there

Being no light in the picture, no
Shadow of anything, no perspective
As in hell. Isn’t this the art of seeing? 

We bite off from you, all the pearl-like memories——

玉米

全身上下都是牙齒
別無其他

咀嚼正在逝去的夏天

我們從你身上咬下
所有珍珠般的記憶
粘滿了陽光

一陣堅硬而甜蜜的吻

Corn

A whole body of teeth
Nothing but teeth

To chew the passing summer

We bite off from you
All the pearl-like memories
Tinged with sunlight

A hard but juicy kiss

Behind every door is either a home or a prison cell——

像鳥，像人

所有的門都是人造的
即便是天堂和地獄里的門

在每扇門後
要麽是個家
要麽是個牢房
多半兩者皆是
很少皆不是

唯一無門的生活空間
是鳥巢或天空
兩者皆屬鳥
皆不屬人

 Like Birds, Like Humans

All doors are man-made
Even those in hell and heaven

Behind every door
Is either a home
Or a prison cell
More often both
Than neither

The only living space without a door
Is a nest or the sky
Both for birds
Neither for man 

On a sleepless autumn night, I quietly buried my heart in your backyard——

初戀

遠，整整繞過地球半圈
從世界的另一面
我回到久別的故土
村邊的小河早已幹凅
兒時的玩伴依稀不見
只有蛙鳴如舊
往事如煙

聽說你嫁到外鄉
不知你男人是誰
也不知你是否兒女雙全
又聽說你幾年前病故
送殯時也許有哭聲震天
祭奠者與我卻一無關聯

是的，因為我早已先你而亡
那是大約兩代人之前
在一個不眠的秋夜
我悄悄把心葬在你家後院
那顆楝樹雖已不在
我們相擁的身影
仿佛還在樹下時聚時散

First Love

Afar, far from the other side of this world
I return to my native place for the first time
The riverlet through the village has dried up
Childhood playmates are rarely seen
Except frogs singing aloud as before

I heard that you were married to an unknown stranger
I don’t know who he was, nor am I aware
If ever you had one or two children
Also, I heard you died a few years ago
There must have been many cries over your loss
But none of them had anything to do with me

Definitely not, for I had already died before you
That was almost two generations ago
On a sleepless autumn night
I quietly buried my heart in your backyard
Right under that banyan tree. Though it is no longer
There, our muted laughters left a deep impression
On the field as if still echoing against the stump

The jungle has no prey in the first place except hunting per se——

思想獵人

我遁著它的身後
偷偷潛入茂密的森林
突然，它消失得無影無蹤
不知它是否還會折返

久久靜伏在幽深處
我漸漸似有所悟：
叢林中本無獵物，只有追尋

Thought Hunting

stalking behind it
i sneaked into the thick forest
where it suddenly vanished
i did not know when, even whether
it would reappear at all

lying long in ambush
at the heart of silences
i became increasingly aware
the jungle has no prey in the first place
except hunting per se

Every bee dies while charging towards light——

在這開口瓶里

每只蜜蜂都死於
沖向光明的霎那

因為逃往黑暗
蒼蠅們都活了下來
甚至更加繁盛

如果
如果空瓶倒轉呢？

Within This Open Bottle

Every bee dies
While charging towards light

All flies survive
Even thrive
By fleeing into darkness

What
What if the empty bottle rotates 

I will never convert my proto selfhood into white Dataism, no——

有關可塑性的思考

當然，我會將我的皮膚
進行無色處理，我會染发
戴上一對藍色的隱形眼鏡，我甚至
會去整容，不過，如果我真的要這麽做
我向您保證，在講這種外語時（我十九歲
才開始像青蛙一樣模仿它），我不會消除
自己原有的鄉下口音；我也不會
完全內化英語的語法以及
亞里士多德的邏輯。不，我向您保證，我不會
放棄看電影或電視劇，讀書
聽歌，雖然我討厭它們都低俗不堪，但全都用
中文。我天生就是吃餃子
吃豆腐的，因此雖然我用英語寫作， 但注定
總是喜歡講普通話。我還向您保證，即使我新近
在科學，民主和人權的潮流中
受過洗，我會正如我的兒子們一樣，與
我父親的單倍群雷同。不管
我們怎樣認同自己或被他人認同，這就是
我向您保證的：我永遠都不會把我的原始自我
變成白色數據主義，不，絕不
在我的微黃的心肌中有所改變

Pondering Plasticity

Sure, I would paint my skin
Into a colorless color, & I would dye my hair
Wear two blue contacts, & I would even
Go for plastic surgery, but if I really do
I assure you, I will not remove my native village
Accent while speaking this foreign tongue (I began
To imitate like a frog at age nineteen); nor will I
Completely internalize the English syntax &
Aristotelian logic. No, I assure you that I’ll not give up
Watching movies or TV series, reading books
Listening to songs, each in Chinese though I hate them
For being too low & vulgar. I was born to eat dumplings
Doufu, & thus fated to always prefer to speak Mandarin
Though I write in English. I assure you that even if I am
Newly baptized in the currents of science, democracy &
Human rights, I will keep in line with my father’s
Haplogroup just as my sons do. No matter how
We identify ourselves or are identified by others, this is
What I assure you: I will never convert my proto selfhood
Into white Dataism, no, not
In the yellowish muscle of my heart

A Micro-interview with Poetry in Voice

詩人袁昌明應邀「Poetry in Voice」採訪實錄：

-Did you read poetry when you were in high school? Is there a particular poem that you loved when you were a teenager?

-Yes, I did. I loved Guo Xiaochuan’s poetry in particular. 

-When did you first start writing poetry? And then when did you start thinking of yourself as a poet?

-I started to write poetry first in Chinese when I was in high school, but I have never thought of myself as a poet; rather, I always call myself a poetry author. For me, “poet” is a noble title associated with those great poetry composers like Li Bai, Su Dongpo, Shakespeare, Keats, Pushkin, Neruda, and Tagore, whose poetic work has stood the test of history well, received much academic attention, or gained wide popularity among ordinary folks. Although I think I have written (and published) quite a lot of good individual poems, none of them actually belongs to any one of those three cateogories yet. Hence I prefer to use “poet” as an “other referent” rather than a “self-referent,” that is, a term to refer to other poetry authors rather than to myself.    

-What do you think a poet’s ‘job’ is?

-Writing poetry to his/her best abilities. 

-If you have a poem in our anthology what inspired you to write it?

-I got my inspiration [for “Chinese Chimes: Nine Detours of the Yellow River”] from a Chinese translation of the book titled The God of Small Things. If memory serves me right, it is the description of a small riverlet I happened to read about randomly that made me want to emulate it. No matter what, I have never had access to the book since then, nor have I ever tried to read its original English version. 

-If you had to choose one poem to memorize from our anthology, which one would it be?

-Probably John Keats’s “When I Have Fears That I May Cease To Be” or Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” simply because I like the two the most — they are not only truly lyric and short but also particularly touching and meaninful to me. For instance, I have frequently thought of death since childhood: I fear I “may cease to be” before I can fulfill my life’s goal in a minimal way. On the other hand, I often imagine what my life could have been: at each juncture, if i had taken a different road, I would have lived a dramatically different life. Indeed, full of such junctures or choices, including those of friends, schools, the subjects of study, the places to pursue one’s education, the persons to marry and etc., life could always be lived in an entirely different way. 

捷克攝影師｜ Martin Vlach

Martin Vlach is a photographer and artist based in the Czech Republic.  In his early beginnings he did mostly portraits, very colourful and likeable. He did this for almost five years, but then he thought he needed a change and started something new. He has taught himself over the years. Like many younger photographers, he looked for inspiration on the Internet. He also did an entrance exam for a photographic school, but he didn’t pass – twice, to be honest. His photographs are captured one’ dreams and also nightmares. He lets his thoughts flow free, try to not think too much and keep it all really unconstrained. He always wanted to capture real emotion – just simple photos full of emotion which would have an impact on people.

Martin Vlach是捷克共和国的摄影师和艺术家。 他的早期創作主要是肖像，這些作品通常色彩鮮豔且讨人喜欢。 他做了将近五年，但后来他认为自己需要改变并开始尝试新生事物。 近年来，他主要靠自学汲取經驗。 像许多年轻的摄影师一样，他在互联网上寻找灵感。他曾嘗試考摄影学校，卻不成功。 他的攝影作品大多是對梦的捕捉。 他不想讓自己的思維受到任何禁錮，以确保創作不受约束。 他想通過最簡單的鏡頭影像來表達人們的真实情感，並藉此影響人們的觀感。

【海外詩粹】袁昌明雙語詩選《思想獵人》中的全部图片，取自於Martin Vlach代表作品中的一部分. 【海外詩粹】编辑部感謝Martin Vlach及其團隊的无私共享，谨向这位年輕有為的超現實主義攝影師致以真誠的敬意!

感 謝 作 者 授 權

*【海外詩粹】袁昌明雙語詩選《思想獵人》中的全部詩文已由詩人袁昌明Changming Yuan授權，版權歸原作者袁昌明 Changming Yuan所有。任何個人或網絡平台如欲用稿請與原作者聯繫。

*詩人袁昌明部分發表作品Publications: 
Poem title(s): Awaiting
Title: Best of the Best Canadian Poetry in English: Tenth Anniversary Edition
Publisher: Tightrope Books
Editors: Molly Peacock, Anita Lahey
Date: 2017
Publication type: Anthology

Poem title(s): Y
Title: Threepenny Review
Publisher: Threepenny Review
Editors: Wendy Lesser
Date: 2014

Publication type: Periodical/Magazine
Poem title(s): Last Single Sale
Title: BestNewPoemsOnline
Publisher: Best New Poems
Date: 2011
Publication type: Anthology

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