The Gaze

YE Hui
Translated from the Chinese by Dong LI

Many kinds of insects Only live in shadows, mints Need just a small dose of light In an ancient courtyard, the present and memoriesDo not take turns to keep watch, in the airThe smell of grass is in fact The smell of harvest, a window opensShadows preferred by hollow carvingBring a stone lion back to life: hair wildly growingSharp claws curled, whose stillnessHolds the breath, like a confrontation in a negotiationDuring which someone may leave to call in the bathroomNearby, a lady with sunken eyes looks downOn the world (who only likes earrings)Night quickly comes, all black, no reflectionOn the staircase, only dingy transactions Take place, in the art museumA spotlight seems to shine on one painting(As if deadly fixed), a rat in the gutterRuns in and out, as if to see whether it is day againDawn appears first on a branchWhere a few ordinary birds hide, at middayA poet sits in the shade of a treeStaring at the lit square because you cannot make outThe contours in dazzling light注视很多昆虫只生活在暗影里，薄荷只要小剂量的光在古老的院子里，现在和记忆并不轮值，空气中青草的气息，其实是收割的气息，有一扇窗子会打开，镂空雕喜欢的阴影会使石狮子复活：毛发疯长利爪蜷缩，它的安静只是一种屏息，犹如谈判中的对峙中间会有人离开，去洗手间打电话旁边，眼窝深陷的女人目空一切（只喜欢吊坠）夜晚很快来临，夜里全是黑的，没有倒影只有楼梯道里昏暗的交易在进行，美术馆里有一盏射灯，仿佛永远照着一张画（它被盯死了），老鼠在下水道进进出出，仿佛在看天有没有亮晨曦首先出现在树冠上里面藏着几只寻常的鸟，而中午诗人会坐在树荫下注视着明亮的广场，因为在强光下你会看不清轮廓

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Zhao Ming

YE Hui is an acclaimed Chinese metaphysical poet who lives in Nanjing. His poems in English translation have appeared or are forthcoming in 128 Lit, The Arkansas International, Asymptote, Bennington Review, Blackbird, Cincinnati Review, Circumference, Copihue Poetry, Guernica, Kenyon Review, Lana Turner, Nashville Review, POETRY, Poetry Northwest, and Zocálo Public Square. The English full-length translation of his latest collection, The Ruins, was awarded a PEN/Heim Translation Grant and is forthcoming from Deep Vellum.

Dong LI is a multilingual author who translates from Chinese, English, French, and German. He is the English translator of the PEN/Heim-winning The Gleaner Song (Giramondo & Deep Vellum, 2021) by the Chinese poet Song Lin, and The Wild Great Wall (Deep Vellum, 2018) by the Chinese poet Zhu Zhu. His debut collection of poetry The Orange Tree (University of Chicago Press, 2023) was the inaugural winner of the Phoenix Emerging Poet Book Prize and a finalist for Poetry Society of America’s Four Quartets Prize.

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Blackbird

23.1

Richmond, Virginia

Virginia Commonwealth University

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