Liu Zongxuan 柳宗宣 | OUR BODIES AS RUINS 身体的遗址[视频]

Liu Zongxuan 柳宗宣
OUR BODIES AS RUINS 身体的遗址

You’ve brought the solitude of San Francisco to Wuhan.
Past 3 a.m., a dim light spills from under your door.

Unable to fall asleep among your books,
you lean over your computer as if guarding it.

You have parted the ocean to visit me—
my own path ahead is narrowing.

We visit the city where we lived for thirty years
And find it hardly recognizable—as if we had only sojourned here.

A modern highway takes us by our old homes—
Born in this country, we must pass away here.

To push back old age, what things can we evoke from youth:
passionate times, former lovers that our bodies remember?

Miraculous young love and its mysteries that our
bodies knew—we seem now to reside in a foreign place.

Everything falls apart, our bodies become ruins, the flames
go out. You stand among the broken walls of our hometown

mourning. It’s become nearly as foreign as youth.
You return to San Francisco. I'll stay, guarding the wreckage.

2011 for Bao Lin

Translation from Chinese by Ming Di and Frank Stewart

柳宗宣，1961年出生于湖北省国营后湖机械农场。 27岁开始写诗。
1999年移居北京，曾任中国青年出版社《青年文学》杂志诗歌编辑多年。
2009年回湖北，至今，供职于江汉大学新诗研究所，硕士生导师。
出版过诗集三部；诗学专著《从信匣到敬箱：当代诗文本阅读》；《语词居住的山冈》等。

Liu Zongxuan, born in 1961 in Qianjiang, Hubei Province, has published three books of poetry. He lived for 10 years in Beijing where he worked as a literary editor and then returned to Hubei. In recent years he has worked at Jianghan University in Wuhan as Director of the Institute of New Poetry. He recorded the reading in his mountain home during the 2020 quarantine.

© Ming Di

身体的遗址
 
你把旧金山的孤独带到武汉
深夜转钟三点。房门泄露
 
一线灯光。你守在计算机
和床头的杂书前，尚未入眠
 
你浩如烟海的穿行，逼现
——我越来越狭窄的前途
 
我们经历的城市，三十年
变了容貌无从辩认，寄居而已
 
一条高速公路通向平原的旧宅
在这国家生，也在这个国家死
 
能寄什么幻念——忆起五十年
我们的光阴，重温身体经历的
 
男欢女爱，以此打发迫近晚年
的孤寂。性事的娇贵与神迹
 
远离身体的异域。一切在瓦解
身体成了一个遗址：它燃烧过
 
现在残垣断壁。在其中你们凭吊
我们奔回的家乡几乎变成异乡
 
你还可以回到旧金山。蜗居于此
我哪里也不愿去，守看只身孤影

（2011，12，汉口，给宝林）