Homebound Geese (trans. Melisa Cahnmann-Taylor and Kuo Zhang)
There was a silver lining in the sky when we lost you by Roberto Jamora
translated from the Chinese
For years I haven’t seen flocks of geese return home.
I recall, long ago, their exodus on Chinese Lovers Day.
In the early autumn wind, we watched birds leave us
just as a heavy snow entered the mountain, alone.
From afar the flock’s mourning song is split
across the bank by the reed flowers into eight petals.
Everyone can hear it evenly.
I’m hurt by tears you shed just as a hill,
covered in white chrysanthemums, aches in an early winter.
For years I haven’t seen geese return home.
For years I haven’t observed a Lovers Day.
All this time we’ve been busy migrating,
one forbidden place to another.
归雁
已经多年没有见过归雁了
往年总在七夕日
我们在初秋的风里看雁
而一场大雪独自进山
那远处传来的哀歌
被隔岸的芦花撕成八瓣
又被雁声均匀地送给每一个人
我伤痛于你落下的一滴泪
一坡白菊伤痛于早到的时间
已经多年没见过归雁了
已经多年没留意过七夕了
这些年 我们都忙于迁徙
从一个禁地到另一个禁地
—————
Nianxi Chen, born in 1970 at Danfeng, Shannxi Province, began writing poems in 1990. In 1999, he left his hometown and labored as a miner across China for 16 years. In 2015, he couldn’t continue as a miner due to the illness caused by his occupation: black lung disease. In 2016, he was awarded the Laureate Worker Poet Prize. His poetry and life were featured in a 2018 documentary, Demolition Work, about migrant worker poets in China. Chen’s poetry book, Records of Explosion (Taibai Wenyi Press), provides lyrical documentation of the hidden costs behind China's financial boom. Chen's poems have appeared in Poetry Periodical, Qinghai Lake, Chinese Poetry, Shandong Literature, and Wutai Mountain.
Melisa Cahnmann-Taylor, Meigs Professor of Language and Literacy Education at the University of Georgia, is the co-editor of The Creative Ethnographer's Notebook (2024), the poetry book, Imperfect Tense (2016) and five other books on the arts of language and education. Recipient of six NEA Big Read Grants, a 2023 NEA Distinguished Fellowship, Hambidge Residency Award, and the Beckman award for Professors Who Inspire, she was appointed in 2020 as Fulbright Scholar Ambassador. Her poems, translations, and essays have appeared in Georgia Review, Lilith, American Poetry Review, Poet Lore, Barrow Street, Mom Egg, Plume, Tupelo, Rattle, Hawaii Pacific Review, and elsewhere.
Kuo Zhang is an Assistant Professor in Education at Siena College and received her PhD in TESOL & World Language Education at the University of Georgia. Her poem, “One Child Policy” was awarded second place in the 2012 Society for Humanistic Anthropology (SHA) Poetry Competition held by the American Anthropological Association. Her poems have appeared in The Roadrunner Review, Lily Poetry Review, Bone Bouquet, K’in, DoveTales, North Dakota Quarterly, Literary Mama, Mom Egg Review, Adanna Literary Journal, Raising Mothers, MUTHA Magazine, Journal of Language and Literacy Education, and Anthropology and Humanism.