Ma Yongbo: On the Farm in the North  

On the farm where my father’s army is stationed,
my elder sister and I are standing beside the ridge of the field,
holding hands—her hands are warm,
slightly rough from labour;
we are both childhood and adulthood.

We can’t tell the season; that stretch of field sloping
like the wing of a large bird,
windbreaks dividing the plots of land.
We are looking at the steam-like mist rising below the slope.
It is quiet all around, only the two of us—
no red flags, no father, no yellow military uniforms.

The army seems to have withdrawn,
leaving us there, forgotten.
First, we dig mouse holes to collect soybeans,
watching the despair of the mouse family.
Then we chase quails in the furrows;
they look like little brown clods of earth.

When we grow tired of games
we stand there talking—
It seems that as long as we keep talking,
nothing will happen.

I comfort my sister “They won’t forget us.
They’ll find us in the poem.
This is a poem.”
As I say this, my sister’s eyes are bright,
like the evening stars rising from below the field.

~~~

在父亲军队的农场里
我和姐姐站在田垄旁
我们拉着手，姐姐的手很暖
略微带有劳动的粗糙感
我们既是童年，又是成年

分不清季节，那片田野倾斜着
像一只大鸟的翅膀
防风林分割开地块
我们望着坡下面蒸腾的雾气
四下里很静，只有我们俩
没有红旗，没有父亲，没有黄军装

军队似乎已经撤走
单单把我们忘在那里
我们先是挖老鼠洞收集黄豆
欣赏老鼠一家的绝望
然后又在垄沟里追逐鹌鹑
它们像一个个褐色的土块

当游戏变得厌倦
我们便站在那里说话
似乎只要不停地说话
就什么事都不会发生

我安慰着姐姐，“他们不会忘记我们的
他们会在诗中找到我们
这就是一首诗。”
我这么说的时候，姐姐的眼睛很亮
像正在从田野下方升起的晚星

~~~~

Poem and translation 2026 Ma Yongbo

Ma Yongbo 马永波 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 is also the first translator to introduce British and American postmodern poetry into Chinese. He has published over eighty original works and translations since 1986 included 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. The Collected Poems of Ma Yongbo (four volumes, Eastern Publishing Centre, 2024) comprising 1178 poems, celebrate 40 years of writing poetry.