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Deborah Bogen: Three poems by Yongbo Ma
Last May I received an email from the Chinese poet and scholar Yongbo Ma (that’s the English ordering of names) bringing some tantalizing news. He’d seen my work online and wanted to translate it. After looking Yongbo up, I gladly agreed and before I really knew what we were into, he’d translated some of my box poems and submitted them to Chinese poetry sites.
I do not read Mandarin but I have a friend who does. Joe read the translations and blessed them (thank you Joseph Ramsey.) And just like that we were off, writing, conferring online and publishing Bogen boxes where many Chinese readers saw them. I filed all of this under one of life’s surprising turns, and of course found myself looking for Yongbo’s poems in English. A few had been translated, but not enough.
So, I asked him if he wanted to let me try putting his poems in an American English idiom of some kind and he generously agreed. Soon my email box was filled with “trots” – rough English equivalents to the Mandarin of his poems. Panic ensued. Yongbo and I had become quite close friends. We emailed and texted often, sometimes working on poems, sometimes sharing the nature of our lives and even our thoughts about the world’s dangerous situation. I feel that I know him, and what he means to do with his prodigious translation work. Yongbo loves the poets and the poems, but he is also a believer in the kind of bridges that can be built across oceans, cultures and languages, when we engage with each other’s poetry. In short, my admiration for what he is doing had grown and now I was faced with doing something I am not very trained in. Translating.
When I first got these poems, I was not sure how to read them — not sure I got what Yongbo was after. But reading about Chinese poetry it seemed to me that these poems fall within the boundaries of a tradition where the poet makes an observation about nature, develops a metaphor from that observation and applies it to human experience, and even the experience of one specific human being. It is a quiet way to create a big impact. When you read Yongbo’s poems you can see if perhaps I got that right, and write to me with your thoughts.
I want to say something about the trust and intimacy that are a major part this kind of enterprise but that’s a big topic. I will say, I trust Yongbo and he trusts me. Without that trust freely given none of the translation of my poems or of Yongbo’s could have occurred.
Yongbo Ma (publishing under MaYongbo) writes beautiful thoughtful poems. I hope these attempts of mine do some justice to the quiet magnitude that is always there in a MaYongbo poem.
Deborah Bogen, 12/27/2023
~
Snow Falling on Snowland
Snow falls from the tree’s branches down
to the snow below.
I can’t recall how many snowfalls I’ve witnessed.
I wanted to record each one but I can’t —-
nor can I remember
what I was thinking
when today’s snow light brightened this room.
I just stood by the window a long time.
Watching the empty snow land.
These days I’m always like this
And late at night, before sleep, I watch the world
outside.
Snow, darkness, sky, passer-by lost half-way,
I’m like a child, or like God, who
when startled carefully counts his treasures,
then calms down.
~
Sketch
A potato field – each plant a foot high.
I’m six, or seven, alone at the edge
of a ridge.
Summer-warmed road, wind in poplars,
thatched roofs. Suddenly
a bird flying up from the field, so small,
straight into the sky.
Its chirp didn’t match its heady flight.
The sound went ahead —
as if the bird was chasing its own song.
Behind it, another bird rose, then
they dove together, two clods falling into
a furrow, disappearing,
then reappearing, erupting. I stared, stunned, by
the strings of silver bells
that made the human world feel — lower.
All this was long ago, but
I still believe it was the song of that lark
that left me forgetting
everything.
~
Here in This Early Autumn Grassland
you’re lying on a slope, a hat covering your face,
the romance you’re reading set aside, the cup of water
half-drunk.
Even the box of blackberries, still firm, is uneaten,
but your dog lifts his head. He hears, before you do,
the dull distant thunder.
You feel nothing, but as the bushes take on a darker green,
you sense it,
and in the grass — insects rub their wings.
You can’t see the village, the church bells are silent,
but thunder is like a guarantee that everything exists,
that the wine will not sour,
that the season will turn again,
as it always has. You stay in this afternoon
where the thunder, in its faraway sky,
is a like a tender giant strolling.
Translation from the Mandarin by MaYongbo and Deborah Bogen
Yongbo Ma (MaYongbo) is a Chinese scholar focused on translating and teaching Anglo-American poetry and prose including the work of Dickinson, Whitman, Stevens, Pound, Williams and Ashbery. He recently published a complete translation of Moby Dick. He teaches at Nanjing University of Science and Technology.
Deborah Bogen is a poet and prose writer. Her recent books include “Speak Now This Charm” and “In Case of Sudden Freefall.” Both are available from Jacar Press. Bogen lives in Pittsburgh PA.
Translation copyright 2024 MaYongbo and Deborah Bogen
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Deborah, We met through Deb Bogen in Santa Monica who is married to Andy Bogen. Thank you for this post – what a wonderful adventure and lovely poems!
Susan Suntree
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Thank you for the gift of these beautiful poems.
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Thank you, Clayton, for your comments on many of our posts in VP. It’s nice to see that people are paying attention…
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When I read the phrase
“I’m like a child, or like God, who
when startled carefully counts his treasures,
then calms down” I am filled with emotion; this happens particularly when I read translations of Chinese Poetry. I can not find anywhere a book containing an english version of a poem my father once copied out from memory for me: Winter’s Night by Chia Dao (779-843 AD). I read this poem every day. It speaks of ‘bare-willow wind’ and ‘cold mountains’, ‘the cries of two or three wild swans’. An empty cook pot and ladle as the weary traveller is far from home. I think this is the poem that most influences my own writing. I just love it so much. How lucky you are to have such a joyful time translating poetry together. I hope that you will post more. In my heart I am part of all things universally, poetry connects us all.
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What a lovely response to the poem, Helen. Thank you.
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thank you for your loving ancient Chinese poetry,whis to communicate eith you more about poetry
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sorry for my typo
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In my mind this morning is, if it’s not overstepping, I wondered about using snowscape in the title as it creates assonance in English, so it would be ‘Snow Falling in a Snowscape’ or even ‘Snowfall in a Snowscape’.
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Thanks, Helen.
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The Chinese original is “snow falls on snow”,but I respect Deborah’s translation, and the subjectivity of the translator is necessary
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Are you the poet MaYongbo? (are Vox Populi able to confirm please?) if so then I am very happy to communicate about poetry but I am only self-educated, so is my father, Mike Bannister, who is also a poet. I’m just a wordsmith and poetry is my life. It’s how I connect with everything in order to appreciate the world around me. What drew me to Ancient Chinese Poetry is that it feels as if you are stepping into a brilliant moment, mostly poignant, especially mournful, appreciating nature especially. Living in much more urban environments nowadays, compressed lives, we have a need to understand the immediacy of our lives in relation to others and the remnants of the natural world around urban developments. But that ‘small window’ is my own compass point in life. Ancient Chinese Poetry gave me a sense of the value of mesmerising over the smallest detail and I found this very inspiring. I was once criticised for writing short poems. I ignored this criticism and stayed in my ‘small window’. I am glad to be alive, to be happy, to be mournful, to feed my deer and the black squirrels in my garden. Just now, the wild plum trees are showing their white blossom, our garden is a remnant of old monastery land and has some strange plant varieties.
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Lovely, Helen. Thank you. And yes Yongbo Ma and MaYongbo are different versions in English of the same name in Chinese.
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My contact details are on my website www. helenpletts.com
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yes,I am Chinese poey Mayongbo (Yongbo Ma),nice to know you,my Email:451796884@qq.com
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Those are wonderful! Thank you, Deb Bogen (and Michael Simms).
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Deborah Bogen, these are fascinating and completely engaging. Thank you for getting these out into the world!
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Beautiful and hopeful exchange of work! Thanks for publishing this.
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The sound went ahead —
as if the bird was chasing its own song.
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I feel excited by these translations and am glad to meet this Chinese poet. Thank you, Deborah.
Susan Sailer
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thank you,my Email:451796884@qq.com, wish to read your poems
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Michael – What has happened between you and your fellow poet is just plain wonderful. Your description of Yongbo Ma as ‘a believer in the kind of bridges that can be built . . . when we engage with each other’s poetry’ is, of course, a description of you as well. A match! Thank you both for giving us this lovely poetry. Which I have printed out, my way of keeping it to be easily reread.
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Thanks, Jackie. The prose at the top of the post was written by Deb Bogen, the translator of the poems. I love the way she describes the bridges between poets.
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A PHD and professor of Chinese classics have translated Deborah’s prode, and I will publish the materials together on Chinese poetry website when I finish revising it
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Thank you, Yongbo.
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