ZANG DI

FIVE POEMS

translated by Kassy Lee and Zuo Fei

Gateway to a Black Cat by the River

On it, there’s a pitch-black hue second only to 
Christmas night of 1962 which Marilyn Monroe 
didn’t live to see. On it, an array of alabaster,   
though much smaller in size, second only to how 
you’ve felt the snow on the peak of Muztagh Ata 
make the sunlight start to prickle. It’s not just some    
mere embellishment that can easily be dismissed.      
The cat is real but finds it difficult to return to reality.       
Like us, it resides in the outskirts of the capital 
but has never been to Fragrant Hills; it has 
a pungent odor which you’ll never have a chance to smell.  
Between yesterday and today, the only difference is 
the cat is still crouching in the dry, flaxen grass, 
leaving itself exposed to an evil plan.
The cat experiences the passage of time as 
a homing-in-on its soon-to-be prey again and again, 
its patience reduced to part of winter’s game.
When the cat looks back to judge your motives, 
it has the eyes of a wizard wearing a black mask.
It only appears nervous 
so as not to embarrass you. 
It knows you’ve seen its secret:
in its stomach lies 
a magpie with undigested wings.
It knows you haven’t told anybody else yet, as though 
this sort of thing can only be hinted at in poetry.

Gateway to that Horse
Rereading Friedrich Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Under its thick and sweaty hide, a sharp pain 
explodes in another Red Sea.
If only it were simply a brute, under the whip 
it could grow numb to the ruthless beating.
Well, between you and me, what should 
we call the little precious horror 
that makes the boiling blood clot?
When the dark clouds of Turin 
shroud the scene with a black bewilderment,
even if death were lazy, the eternal recurrence 
would take the me-in-you to the edge of the abyss, 
as if there were choices other than the narrow gate.
There, so determined it becomes dull and heavy,
the air has hot fragments in its mouth, as if by accident
it reveals time has had tiger teeth all along.             
There, arms which tightly clasp the horse’s head held high
reach out in a gesture that shows
you have more consciousness than God.   
And yet, taken as resistance, your embrace is 
a storyboard of metamorphoses more naïve
than we are. Your sobs are a necklace singing, 
they turn the ornaments of an unbridled madness 
into a wreath of fresh flowers haloing your obscure legacy.    

Mailing Snow

You sent to the seas, Long live the youth!
but you’d never send the heart of darkness
to a cobra; you sent a cat to a rabbit 
and, because of this, ended up fighting
with the post office. You never thought 
of the possibility of sending a summit 
to some silent stones. The road sign erected there 
clearly states that the stones came from the direction of death:
they fell off the cliff; they’re hazardous
and even blinder than destiny.
Blinder still: you once sent a stepladder 
to the glittering night sky. What happened later
seemed as when, sending all the right presents 
to dreams, you run out of gift boxes. It’s my turn now.
This vast and snowy landscape, a game of chess that
has had a falling out with the way-the-world-really-is, address unknown,
but reincarnation is imminent; as if, besides me,
there will be no more recipients.
Due to the snowy whiteness, reality has left 
very few corners uncovered. Every step remains    
deep or shallow better than black or white. Fortunately, I kept the receipt, 
and on it are these words: ten vases of innocence, nine packages of red dates, 
seven bunches of purity, six sacks of lilies, and
five stacks of calm, mailed at three different times.

Gateway to a Sunward Lotus 
——for Urgen

An effect of scale, colossal flower discs dazzle you
until now yet to turn yellow 
life in itself is a landscape.
To illustrate phototropism: in secret, they turn
their sturdy stems to capture the facial expression 
of the sun, dragging Mother Earth’s drama 
into the roles they play best.
They perform happiest during this act, 
in the inner grasslands, north of the Yin Mountains,
as if the bare soil, briny and alkaline, 
has never been able to shake their belief in themselves.
They decompose the sun’s willpower
into the spirit of asters.
The fluctuations of their curvature between dawn and dusk,
why we’ve named them sunflowers,
is an invention innate to the nature of the universe.
Hidden on the decussate leaves are more   
secrets of nature. Watered by the Yellow River,
the main reason for their sundry yellows.
The flowers stretching to the horizon 
make you realize: there was once a huge game of chess, 
but you are no longer its pawn.
That’s right, their natural response to gravity
has just come to weigh on you.

Gateway to the Art of Anti-Dalliance

It seems as though you could stay as long as you wish,
but how long you’re allowed to stand
under a blooming mountain peach tree
has long been a truth unspoken. Stay hypnotized

for too long, longer than socially acceptable, and the person will     
become embarrassed. The shame arising from flirtation
will burst from where the magpie flies and 
stab you in the back: be mindful of your own image.

The rules state that if the person dislocates from you, 
it is a legitimate mistake; but if it’s the other way around,
then you’re not to be pardoned, which probably triggers
the sweet scent of danger, even a nameless fear.

If you stand under a peach tree in blossom long enough,
and if you are still you, the person will start to think that
part of your human nature has been neutered—    
even though it’s been explained over and over, how is this possible!