HU XIAN
ONE LONG POEM
translated by Zuo Fei and Jennifer Fossenbell
The Butterfly
1.
The butterfly is flying,
with the thoughts of a butterfly.
When it’s gone,
in the void there seems to be
something imperceptible.
2.
Elusive, but accurate,
this is the way of a butterfly:
To swerve all of a sudden, or
in a string of flashbacks, carry off a storm.
3.
Standing still: for
the wind to read. A bookmark
slightly tilted.
When its wings quiver, the plot
scrambles. A reader is trapped inside,
fluttering, attempting to
escape the labyrinth.
4.
Fairy tales are clumsy
and metaphors false.
The butterfly sails through streets, aerials, rusty abysses...
In the garden, a face of the departed.
5.
The butterfly is flying; stars
move backward under its wings.
When it descends, colossal things
begin to turn on their own,
unaware of its presence.
6.
I know how a butterfly deals with its screams. I know
the claws’ grip mutes noise, and
its flight can lighten pain.
7.
The fanning of wings: a butterfly’s greeting.
As it alights, a certain
anxiety is followed by peace, the release
of everything restless.
8.
I know someone has been living behind
its constantly flapping wings. They use
fake keys,
paper creases,
rain drops,
old flags,
steel wires,
lightning, and
gossip from a small and distant town.
In moving forward, it leaves behind
memories for them to live in.
9.
Ruins prompt meditation. Nothing
can go through an impasse but
a butterfly’s winding path.
…The disaster may be over
but the spots of light, colors, artistry and patterns…
resemble those of a busy concentration camp.
10.
The butterfly is flying,
geometry tries to learn how it survives.
The butterfly is flying;
its imitators are exhausted. Only
the art we always talk of
is driven by some unfaltering thing.
11.
Sip a few drops of honey,
don’t speak.
Rehearse it again. How pleasant
Spring is—
besides recitation, it brings
weather, pollen, a musical score for the blind.
12.
The butterfly is flying.
Recollection requires time’s consent.
A mask is needed, for it ensures
the silent remain unknown
when they return to the crowd.
13.
The butterfly folds its wings,
still not sure of anything.
The butterfly folds its wings; music gives comfort
to listeners who analyze the comfort they receive.
The clock squanders time;
those who postpone their arrival circumvent fate.
14.
The butterfly folds its wings.
Deep in the mirror, the love discussed by cancer cells
has become a perfect equation.
The butterfly folds its wings,
at the hour of death,
of apples rotting away,
of the dead
dissenting from the words of the living.
15.
The butterfly folds its wings. Various things
towed away from our life
have been well-protected.
The butterfly folds its wings.
River banks are gone, and woods.
Many things have vanished,
but not the butterfly, for it has nowhere to go.
16.
When the butterfly is absent, it’s
hard to prove it was ever present.
Sleep is devoured, the dream innocent. It’s
hard to prove the scent, that dying hand.
17.
The air indulges in its invisible existence,
but what touches you is the rolling waves.
A heavy fog comes from
a skull town,
its lonely stained-glass windows.
18.
No writing,
not even words.
No butterfly to tell of butterflies.
Every moment relies on
an ambiguous continuation of moments.
19.
The one who likes to doodle
draws eyes on a butterfly’s wings and ribs...
As the butterfly flies, he,
born at the wrong time,
closes his eyes which
by flying afar, obtain new flesh. On the canvas
he’ll wait for the butterfly’s return.
20.
No one is able to explain
how a butterfly disappears
or how it emerges.
It shows up over and over again
to bring us the time we need to live.
21.
The butterfly emerges, the omen emerges.
Far off, when the future
turns ahead of time,
the butterfly offers its tenuous silhouette.
It sets off once more, its pair of
vibrant wings
lighter than prophesy and fruit.
22.
The one who goes searching for butterflies
has a dream to ride.
What he finds
is a rider of horrors, just
back from the material world, who’s at peace
because he’s dealt with so many tragedies.
23.
Once again, the butterfly takes off, back to
the prologue from the epilogue,
—its slender abdomen, both familiar and odd.
24.
The butterfly goes on flying,
helping the wind find a new start
helping the light find its joints.
The butterfly continues its flight,
our minds carried away by illusions.
25.
The butterfly flutters its wings;
monkeys and cats
practice tongue twisters in confusion. Sometimes
its wings halt, stretched to the limit,
but still not enough: it panics
at the abyss of
its internal space.
26.
Its wings enlarge, used for
a continual beginning, an incitement
always unfinished.
While its body shrinks,
like a small drawer you can pull out, a source
hiding in the dark.
27.
One butterfly is a fact,
while two butterflies
dispel that fact.
When a butterfly flies, the past
becomes something you can describe.
28.
Do not strive to conquer, for
only aimless flight can be called moral.
A disaster, and a butterfly on the wing.
But no one can tell why.
29.
Elegy is too modest, hymn
has a secret arrogance.
The butterfly knows another space,
so it goes up and
puts on a nice bow tie.
30.
The butterfly is flying, myth is useless.
—Its wings are getting thinner.
Lost in thought,
one looks up, as if
checking a prescription.
31.
To see a butterfly
is to see another life.
To see a butterfly, oh human,
is to have lived your whole life.
32.
The butterfly is flying,
an ode to the minority.
The butterfly is flying,
a dirge that leaves out no one.
The butterfly is flying.
Excessive rapture, tabulations like lies.
The butterfly is flying,
a mobile contract.
33.
When the butterfly is flying,
it has made up its mind.
When the butterfly is flying,
—there’s a diary we’ve never read.
The body of a tattooed man,
trapped in what he doesn’t believe.
34.
The butterfly is flying, the whistles are mute.
The butterfly seems as if it is from the other side of the world.
Flapping its wings, it hides itself
in a succession of metaphors.
—You realize something has happened,
but don’t know what it is.
35.
The butterfly perches on a white wall,
and the wall, as always, takes the butterfly’s side,
both worn out by stillness and flight.
36.
Again, the butterfly pauses,
like a cross-section of a riddle,
returned from afar, motionless, something incomplete
roaming inside it.
37.
Logic, theology, exegesis,
untamable suffering, love withered away...
Only the butterfly is an independent being.
As that which spins,
it slides past a center waiting to be defined.
As that which is still,
it takes a walk in a place further afield.
The Chinese Taoist, Zhuangzi, famously wrote,“Was it I who dreamt of the butterfly, or was it the butterfly who dreamt of me?”—a question that has floated on the wind for thousands of years. The butterfly once again appears as a symbol for dreaming or other lives in the Chinese legend, The Tale of Liang Shanbo & Zhu Yingtai, a tragic story about two lovers who are united in the afterlife as butterflies. For Nabokov, catching a butterfly and preserving it as a specimen was beyond a hobby; it was a passion.So the journey to seek out a butterfly is as mysterious as alchemy, and as sacred as pilgrimage.
A Chinese reader of Hu Xian’s “The Butterfly” may find layers in this work, such as social and political allusions. They may recall historical events in modern and contemporary China—in this case, a reality one wishes to escape, as a butterfly sails from this world to another. Or a reality one wishes to parse, to interpret using the idealistic standards set by the butterfly from another world. But what the poem examines is also of universal significance. Modern world history has spread its values to every corner of the planet; and a good poem is one not confined by time or space.
The poem’s tone is tightly controlled, as Hu Xian seems to be aware that irony must be crafted by the wordsmith’s most delicate hammer. Readers, we are all lucky to receive this poetic bounty—a provocative and profound offer of sorrow and sympathy, a landscape of everything involved.