wild revelry is the privilege of slaves and the common folkthey use their feet to vote their hair to resist and make wavessongs boil the five stars in the public squarenight and day chase each other in the cloudsstudents boycott classes clocks stop at midnightalong the vertical axis of power a meteor soarsan accordion opens the deep folds of timethe clamorous waves of the singer roll stones roll sunfear and courage are the same seedmaking our stomachs ache and achethe moment is defined by a bird turning in midflightthe bird is an image that lasts an instantsoldiers at the city gates must be courting dangerlofty mountains flowing waters end in the palm of a handthe sky leans against the glass of utopiathe grip of the god of death tightens around youthful heartsmidnight hear the dogs howl in the thick foghow can the broken line of death reach the endForbidden City and traffic lightsthe season of change cannot be stoppedopen a history book or a newspaperambushed by tiger leopard jackal wolfbreak out of the snare of Chinese charactersoutside the grate of the underground another prison awaitsthe revolution needs a bigger spaceso that the same tragedy cannot repeat itselfprotest banners lice empty plastic bottlesguitar players leaflets the glint of blood on the hour handthe flocks of geese with tents bound to the earthhunger strikers squandering their last provisionsnegotiations and farmers markets haggling over pricesbrakes fail while flooring the gasambulances wail through the citytrees thirst in silence along the shaded avenuesthe public square absorbs the heat late into the nightmoonlight oscillates insomniacs swimthe storm whirls away the details of the dreamswhispers and martial law warnings rage against the night skya wedding ceremony unfolds beside the monumentthe blue beam of a searchlight escorts the bridefreshly brushed paint is already fadingand you have become unrecognizable in the mirrorhistory eats weeds stones are displacedthe seven stars of the Dipper point to no exitsharp claws cannot reach your own backanonymous diaries dispersenarratives replace different charactersuntil the end of the opening—all the long nights are doomed expectationsall revolutions are ideals betrayedtears run down the face of a young girlsecret little paths outside historyshow us the way to learn how to grieve in revelryand in grief to learn how to sing silently silentlyon the way out of the square looking backthe tide laps the night into a giant wave 第二章狂歡是奴隸與百姓的特權他們用腳投票 用頭髮興風作浪歌聲煮沸廣場上的五顆星星夜與晝在雲中互相追逐學生罷課 時針停在午夜時分垂直的權力上流星飛翔手風琴展開歲月深深的褶皺歌手的聲浪滾動石頭也滾動太陽恐懼與勇敢是同一種子讓我們的胃隱隱疼痛瞬息是飛鳥轉向的含義飛鳥是瞬息持續的形象兵臨城下必是險招高山流水盡在手掌中天空在烏托邦玻璃傾斜死神握緊年輕的心半夜 聽迷霧中的狗叫死亡的虛線如何抵達終點紫禁城與交通信號燈更換的季節卻不可阻擋打開歷史課本或報紙埋伏於虎豹豺狼在漢字的陷阱突圍地下格柵外也是監獄革命需要更大的空間而同一悲劇不可能重演橫幅標語 蝨子 空塑料瓶吉他手 傳單 時針血光帳篷被大地捆綁的雁群絕食揮霍最後的口糧談判與農貿市場 討價還價剎車失靈而猛踩油門救護車流動中響徹全城林蔭道的樹木肅立而飢渴廣場在深夜攝取溫暖月光浮動 失眠的人游泳暴風雨捲走夢的細節絮語與戒嚴警報激蕩夜空婚禮在紀念碑旁舉行藍色探照燈光迎娶新娘剛刷好的油漆正在褪色和鏡中的你難以辨認歷史吃野草 石頭被移動北斗七星沒指向出口利爪夠不到自己的後背佚名的日記本散落敘事中更換不同的角色直到開放的結尾所有長夜是詛咒中的期待所有革命是被背叛的理想在少女臉上留下淚痕歷史以外的秘密小徑引領我們 狂歡學會悲傷悲傷中學會默默歌唱在走出廣場的途中回頭潮水拍擊夜成為巨浪
II.
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“II,” by Bei Dao, translated by Jeffrey Yang, from SIDETRACKS, copyright © 2022, 2023 by Zhao Zhenkai.
Translation copyright © 2024 by Jeffrey Yang.
Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.
Bei Dao, one of the most influential writers of post-Cultural Revolution China, is the author of several books of poetry, essays, and short fiction. His work has been translated into more than thirty languages. Bei Dao’s awards and honors include the Aragana Poetry Prize from the International Festival of Poetry in Casablanca, the PEN / Barbara Goldsmith Freedom to Write Award, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He was elected an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and was conferred an honorary degree of Doctor of Letters (Litt.D.) by Brown University. Bei Dao has taught at the University of California at Davis, the University of Alabama, the University of Notre Dame, and Beloit College in Wisconsin. He has lived in Hong Kong with his family since August 2007, and is the Professor of Humanities at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
Jeffrey Yang is the author of the poetry collections Line and Light (Graywolf Press, 2022), Hey, Marfa (Graywolf Press, 2018), Vanishing-Line (Graywolf Press, 2011), and An Aquarium (Graywolf Press, 2008). He is the translator of Bei Dao’s Sidetracks (New Directions, 2024); Ahmatjan Osman’s Uyghurland, the Farthest Exile (Phoneme Media, 2015), cotranslated with the author; Liu Xiaobo’s June Fourth Elegies (Graywolf Press, 2012); Su Shi’s East Slope (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2008); and Bei Dao’s autobiography City Gate, Open Up (New Directions, 2017). He edited the anthologies Birds, Beasts, and Seas: Nature Poems (New Directions, 2011), Time of Grief: Mourning Poems (New Directions, 2013), and the collection The Sea Is a Continual Miracle: Sea Poems and Other Writings by Walt Whitman (University Press of New England, 2017). Yang works as an editor at New Directions Publishing and the New York Review of Books. He lives in Beacon, New York.
Sidetracks, Bei Dao’s first new collection in almost fifteen years, is also the poet’s first long poem and his magnum opus—the artistic culmination of a lifetime devoted to the renewal and reinvention of language. “As a poet, I am always lost,” Bei Dao once said. Opening with a prologue of heavenly questions and followed by thirty-four cantos, Sidetracks travels forward and backward along the divergent paths of the poet’s wandering life—from his time as a Young Pioneer in Beijing, through the years of exile living in six countries, back to the rural construction site where he worked during the Cultural Revolution, to the “sunshine tablecloth” in his kitchen in Davis, California, and his emotional visit home after a thirteen-year separation (“the mother tongue has deepened my foreignness”). All the various currents of our times rush into his lifelines, reconfigured through the “vortex of experience” and the poet’s encounters with friends and strangers, artists and ghosts, as he moves from place to place, unable to return home. As the poet Michael Palmer has noted, “Bei Dao’s work, in its rapid transitions, abrupt juxtapositions, and frequent recurrence to open syntax evokes the un-speakability of the exile’s condition. It is a poetry of explosive convergences, of submersions and unfixed boundaries, ‘amid languages.’”
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