by Bei Dao, translated from the Chinese by Eliot Weinberger
JUNE
Wind at the ear says June
June a blacklist I slipped
in time
note this way to say goodbye
the sighs within these words
note these annotations:
unending plastic flowers
on the dead left bank
the cement square extending
from writing to
now
I run from writing
as dawn is hammered out
a flag covers the sea
and loudspeakers loyal to the sea’s
deep bass say June
六月
风在耳边说，六月
六月是张黑名单
我提前离席
请注意告别方式
那些词的叹息
请注意那些诠释 :
无边的塑料花
在死亡左岸
水泥广场
从写作延伸
到此刻
我从写作中逃跑
当黎明被锻造
旗帜盖住大海
而忠实于大海的
低音喇叭说，六月
BLACK MAP
in the end, cold crows piece together
the night: a black map
I’ve come home—the way back
longer than the wrong road
long as a life
bring the heart of winter
when spring water and horse pills
become the words of night
when memory barks
a rainbow haunts the black market
my father’s life-spark small as a pea
I am his echo
turning the corner of encounters
a former lover hides in a wind
swirling with letters
Beijing, let me
toast your lamplights
let my white hair lead
the way through the black map
as though a storm were taking you to fly
I wait in line until the small window
shuts: O the bright moon
I go home—reunions
are one less
fewer than goodbyes
黑色地图
寒鸦终于拼凑成
夜：黑色地图
我回来了———归程
总是比迷途长
长于一生
带上冬天的心
当泉水和蜜制药丸
成了夜的话语
当记忆狂吠
彩虹在黑市出没
父亲生命之火如豆
我是他的回声
为赴约转过街角
旧日情人隐身风中
和信一起旋转
北京，让我
跟你所有灯光干杯
让我的白发领路
穿过黑色地图
如风暴领你起飞
我排队排到那小窗
关上：哦明月
我回来了———重逢
总是比告别少
只少一次
[Editors’ note: ”Black Map” and “June” by Bei Dao, translated by Eliot Weinberger, from The Rose of Time, copyright ©2010 by Zhao Zhenkai, translation copyright ©2010 by Eliot Weinberger. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.]
Bei Dao 北島 (author) the pseudonym of Zhenkai Zhao, was born in 1949 in Beijing. In 1978 he co-founded the underground literary magazine Jintian (Today), which was banned from publication in 1980. As editor-in-chief, Bei Dao, with a group of Chinese writers, revived Jintian in 1990 in Oslo, and it has continued to be published abroad ever since. During the events of Tiananmen Square in 1989, Bei Dao was in Berlin as a writer in residence and was not allowed to return to China. Bei Dao’s books of poetry include The Rose of Time (2009), Unlock (2000), At the Sky’s Edge: Poems 1991–1996 (1996), Landscape Over Zero (1995), Forms of Distance (1994), Old Snow (1991), and The August Sleepwalker (1988). He is also the author of the short-story collection Waves (1985) and two essay collections, Blue House (2000) and Midnight’s Gate (2005), plus the memoir, City Gate, Open Up (2017), translated by Jeffrey Yang. His work has been translated into over thirty languages.
Eliot Weinberger (translator) is an essayist, political commentator, translator, and editor. His books of avant-gardist literary essays include Karmic Traces, An Elemental Thing and, most recently, Oranges & Peanuts for Sale. His political articles are collected in What I Heard About Iraq and What Happened Here: Bush Chronicles. The author of a study of Chinese poetry translation, 19 Ways of Looking at Wang Wei, he is the translator of the poetry of Bei Dao, and the editor of The New Directions Anthology of Classical Chinese Poetry and the Calligrams series published by NYRB Classics. His other anthologies include World Beat: International Poetry Now from New Directions and American Poetry Since 1950: Innovators & Outsiders. Among his translations of Latin American poetry and prose are the Collected Poems 1957–1987 of Octavio Paz, Vicente Huidbro’s Altazor, and Jorge Luis Borges’ Selected Non-Fictions, which received the National Book Critics Circle award for criticism. He was born in New York City, where he still lives.