Translated by David Perry. $15.00 (includes shipping)

Emerging from a 2011 summer trip Han Bo took across China’s northeastern province of Heilongjiang, where he was born and raised, and on into Inner Mongolia, these poems raise deep and difficult questions about the relationship between our ecologically precarious present and the onrushing future. They invite contemplation on how our quickly accelerating present spins China further and further away from its Confucian, Daoist, and Buddhist cultural roots — not to mention what’s left of the more idealistic aspects of its revolutionary Marxist ones — even as hunger grows for a sense of rootedness, haunting the present alongside competing narratives of the past and aspirations for the future.

The result: a nine-poem cycle that contemplates the northeast’s complex history as the place where Russia’s eastward expansion advanced, and then retreated, as China sought to establish itself following the collapse of the Qing, the violence-plagued years of the Republic, and the radical disruptions brought by revolution and ideological zeal. In powerfully charged and condensed language, Han Bo transforms a journey by train through the former Manchu homeland, Russian railway concession zone, and Mao-era industrial core into a poetry which challenges, baffles and enlightens in equal measure.

Hung Out to Dry in Black Smoke

The way the road splits all beneath Heaven: in black smoke 
hung out to dry: strewn along the tracks to awaken 
some slumbering sublimity, lying beyond all belief. 
The earth never sleeps, yet sleepwalks 
like bees rising in black smoke. 
The internal combustion engine’s compassion dreams 
of ancient fells: hay sticking 
to cattle and sheep, feces, mud and urine 
cold and grease-caked, the earth’s 
smoke-stained filth teeming 
with disease vectors.
The horseman’s teeth like rotting pine,
The look of insomnia like eyes hung out to dry in night skies. 
Pity the hanging sun, patrolling summer’s surface. 
From his chariot’s driven dream of power and will 
the master of the plains dismounts, settles 
into concrete-choked Chineseness; cattle and sheep 
wasting away summerlong bonethin amidst a plague of rats. 
Black smoke rends all beneath Heaven, alone 
imagining himself on his horse the emissary rides 
the rails at high speed motionless. 

(2011/6/19 Manzhouli; 2011/7/18 Shanghai)

黑烟挂晒

道为天下裂，黑烟
挂晒：卧轨唤醒沉睡
的浩然无足采信。
大地从未沉睡，梦游
只为蜂出的黑烟挂晒。
内燃机的怜悯梦见
丘原：旱草枯对
牛羊，粪便与泥尿
冷而油腻，大地
挂晒的污迹跃动
而感染捷径。
像骑马人的牙齿一样松朽，
像夜空挂晒眼神一样失眠。
怜悯挂晒，巡视夏的表层。
车厢里的进口意志梦见
草的主人下马，定居
水泥潮闷的汉语；牛羊
的夏啃光骨瘦的鼠灾。
黑烟为天下裂，只身
打马：打马的铁轨的
使者假托高速而不动。

（2011/6/19  满洲里；2011/7/18  上海）