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Record of Demolition
by Nianxi Chen, translated from the Chinese by L. B. Tsau

March 21, 2022 Contributed By: Chen Nianxi, L.B. Tsau

October Day by Jean Charles Cazin
October Day by Jean Charles Cazin, courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago

 

Morning headaches are set to blow up my brain

The extra gift of great machines

The blame is not on the metals

It’s my ageing and brittle nerves

 

I get no guts up to examine my living

It’s hardened, in metallic black

Sharp as the point of air chipper

A light hit will let stones bleed

 

I fritter my midlife away five kilometers in mountains

By breaking boulders layer by layer

It’s the times to recompose myself over and over

 

My lowly family lives at the foot of Mt. Shang

Their sick bodies are wrapped in dirt

I believe how much lifespan cut back from me

How much will be added to theirs

 

I’ve kept three tons of dynamite inside

My family as the fuse

It was set off last night at their bedside

Where I shattered, like a rock exploded





早晨起来头像炸裂一样疼

这是大机器的额外馈赠

不是钢铁的错

是神经老了脆弱不堪

 

我不大敢看自己的生活

它坚硬铉黑

有风镐的锐角

石头碰一碰就会流血

 

我在五千米深处打发中年

我把岩层一次次炸裂

借此把一生重新组合

 

我微小的亲人  远在商山脚下

他们有病身体落满灰尘

我的中年裁下多少

他们的晚年就能延长多少

 

我身体里有炸药三吨

他们是引信部分

就在昨夜在他们床前

我岩石一样轰地炸裂一地

 

(陈年喜)


CHEN NIANXI (Born in 1970) once worked as a rock miner for more than 15 years across China before his health worsened and he was diagnosed with pneumoconiosis. He started writing poetry about three decades ago, and has emerged as one of the best-known practitioners of a relatively new genre in China: migrant worker literature. Chen was invited to speak in U.S. ivy league universities in 2016 after the release of a documentary called The Verse of Us, which features Chen and five other migrant worker poets. Besides poems and essays, he has widely published in China’s influential literary journals, his two critically acclaimed books are poetry collection Demolitions Record in 2019, and most recently, a book of essays, To Live Is to Shout at the Sky.

L.B. TSAU is a New York-based financial journalist with a passion for poetry, also a member of the PEN Chinese Writers Abroad Center. Her Chinese poems have been published widely in Chinese newspapers, literature magazines and poetry anthologies in New York, Taiwan, Hong Kong and the mainland China, etc. Her poems and essays received honorary mentions from the Sino Literature magazine in 2019 and 2020 , and also from the First Chinese Immigrant Literary Contest sponsored by the Chinese Writers Association of New York in 2021.

Filed Under: Featured Content, Featured Poetry, Featured Translation, Poetry, Translation Posted On: March 21, 2022

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