Poetry by Ma Lan: Spoken in the Year of the Cock (for Ma Jian) 鸡年说话——给马坚

Spoken in the Year of the Cock
For Ma Jian

Sister, you have shut me out of the room.
There is no one here;
What are you afraid of?

And I don’t know where
Your ashes are;
I paid the fee to store them ten years
But they said the crematorium was washed away in a flood

Sister, come quickly
You insane maiden
We can fly in the clouds
Try hard to live in the future
Fabricate childhood, imagine the past

Sister, your days were only enough to become
An enemy to you and me;
Who could make sunshine a little brighter
Or a little darker?

But sister, you were an educated youth
Dead at eighteen
No chance to become a woman
Under the shadows in the fields, even God
Saw you still hurrying, three months of labor
Your body empty, wronged, and endangered

Learning to express your feelings from a tree
At a good pace
Bending, changing. Who says people, when they die
Can rise again?

But when you die you stand in the light
Illuminated
This scorching city, our home
Even the mosquitoes stopped flying
Something was brought to an end

If not for you, my sister
Could I have become me?
Where did it come from, this ponderous destiny?
As if dreaming a dream outside the universe

March 4, 2005

鸡年说话
——给马坚

姐姐，你把我关在门外
空无一人
你还在害怕什么

可你的骨灰我不知道
在哪儿了
我交了十年的存灰钱
他们说火葬场被洪水冲没了

姐，快一些到来
你这疯狂的处女
我们云朵里飞
尽可能活在未来
伪造童年，想象过去

姐，你的天才足够成为
你我的敌人
谁能把阳光弄得更明亮些
或更暗一些

但姐姐，你是知青
死在十八岁
还来不及成为女人
在田间的影子之下，上帝都
看见你仍在疾走，三个月的劳动
你的身子空荡，委屈又危险

向一颗树学习表达感情
以好的速度
弯曲，变化。谁说人，死了
还能浮现

而死就站在光中
照亮了
这炎热之城， 我们的家
蚊子都停止飞扬
一件事情被结束

如果没有你，姐姐
我是否更能成为我？
从哪里来的，这巨大的姻缘
仿佛在做梦，一个宇宙之外的梦。

2005/3/4