"Relativity" by Ma Yongbo

 

Relativity

The winter sun, an unfillable pit, 
at the crossroads, between stance and doubt,
between movement and action—
you must turn off the traffic lights and ideas.

A hot-water pipe mumbles indistinct confessions inside the wall,
warming a room with no balcony of ears—
you must turn off the unreliable mechanisms.

Between answer and action, a diving board
sways slightly, the darkness unfathomable—
you must turn off your eyes and abstractions.

A black dog licks the slightly melting ice in a rubber bucket;
its eyes, glowing coal embers, roll across the yard—
you must turn off the door and fear.

The sentinel says: Sit still, do nothing.
Then says: Do something, don't just sit.
The sentinel stands alone, nurturing the statue within his body
to be his own successor—
you must close the window of applications.

The world is ending, just outside the window,
before the torches find us.
Drink wine, eat cold tangerines, lean against the windowsill—
you must turn off the promises.

~

Ma Yongbo was born in 1964, Ph.D., representative of Chinese avant-garde poetry, and a leading scholar in Anglo-American poetry. He is the founder of polyphonic writing and objectified poetics. He has published over eighty original works and translations since 1986, including 9 poetry collections. He focused on translating and teaching Anglo-American poetry and prose, including the work of Dickinson, Whitman, Stevens, Pound, Amy Lowell, Williams, Ashbery and Rosanna Warren. He published a complete translation of Moby Dick, which has sold over 600,000 copies. He teaches at Nanjing University of Science and Technology. The Collected Poems of Ma Yongbo (four volumes, Eastern Publishing Centre, 2024) comprising 1178 poems, celebrates 40 years of writing poetry.