Ha Jin - A Free Life

I pity those who love security and unity.
They're content to live in cellars where
food and drinks are provided for them.
Their lungs are unused to fresh air
and their eyes bleary in sunlight.
They believe the worst life
is better than a timely death.
Their heaven is a banquet table.
Their salvation depends on a powerful man.

In the late afternoon a chorus of birds drifts
and sways a boat brimming with hopes,
forgotten but still floating in the bay.
If your heart is full of longing for
a distant trip, it's time to go.
You must set out alone-
expect no company but stars.

If you want to sing, sing clearly.
Let grief embolden your song.

Alone I stood in the rain, crooning
to the wind, and let my songs
be carried off by the wings
that still cleaved the hazy evening.
I saw my words fall on a mountainside
where trees and grass were dying.

Now and again
your little gate would wave
as if to say "Go away."

How I would like to be a bird
kept in your cage of love. You called me Sparrow but preferred
an eagle or a dove.

You shooed me off your cozy eaves and made me use my wings.
How I cried for fear, for relief. You merely said "Poor thing."

Across oceans and continents I've traveled, wrestling winds.
My heart, homesick, often regrets my strong and spacious wings.

I've lost my sparrow's melody and cannot find your house.
Many times you must have seen me as one born in the clouds.

Another rain will burst them- full of teeth, they will grin through the tiny leaves

that used to conceal their cheeks. I'll take a photo of my pomegranates for you, the only person

I care to show. Like others
you craved the fruit
so much, you overlooked

the crimson blossoms wounded by worms and winds. You could not imagine

some of them would swell
into such heavy pride.
I can tell you, they are sour.

"All aboard!" cried the train attendant.
My father was holding my three-year-old son
to watch me leaving for another continent.

"Good-bye, Taotao." I waved, but my child was silent staring at me with a sullen face,

his tears trickling down.
If only I could have brought him along!
The wheels hissed, about

to grind. "No good-bye,"
he cried finally, "no good-bye, Mama."
I forced a smile, then climbed

the ladder, stabbed by pain.
The village platform began to fall away,
blurred, and disappeared in the plain.

Since then his tears, mingled with mine, have often soaked my bad dreams, although he did join me in '89.

I swear I'll never say good-bye
to my son again, not until
he graduates from Parkview High.

Mama, do you remember the donkey
who collapsed on the street that afternoon?
And the overturned cart, its wheel still moving,

mussels and clams scattered in heaps all around? He lay in a ditch, his belly sweating, heaving, while blood flowed from his mouth.

The old one-eyed driver was kicking him
and yelling, "Get up, you beast!"
Only a long ear twitched, as if to say "I'm trying."

I swear, he was too tired to get on his feet. Unlike a horse playing sick, he was too weak to pretend.

Mama, I can still see that mountain of seafood, the driver standing on it and cracking his whip.

All night long I hear my doves cooing to tell me there's a snowstorm gathering. Their feathers, once intensely white, are gray and tattered, though the whistles I tied to them eleven years ago still scatter notes of brass when they fly.

They tremble a little from cold.
Their short bills having lost the jadelike translucency
are more fragile than before.

Who feeds them now?
Under whose eaves is their cote?
Do they still go to the aspen grove to look for worms?
Do the cats still attack them and steal their young?

Time and again they seem to cry, "Nan, Nan, come and take us away." They make my morning blue, bluer than a freezing dusk.

All day long I see the shadows of their wings flitting about- through my lawn, along the asphalt, across the walls of the dining hall, on the kitchen floor, around my wok…

As the groundhog enters our yard
all the noise ceases in our house.
I dare not raise my voice
to tell my family in the kitchen
that we have a little visitor,
a portly guy in a brown coat.
If he hears any sound in here
he'll run away, rocking his ample rump.

He stands up on his hind feet,
clasps his hands below his ursine face,
and looks right then left as if to make sure
his shadow hasn't followed him.
Soon he roams the grass casually,
sampling our clover and alfalfa,
catching an insect or snail.
He never jumps like his cousin the squirrel.

How can I tell him he's always welcome?
A humble guest, he has no idea
we celebrate a day in his name.
I keep my face back from the window
so he can enjoy a quiet meal,
or even a sunbath as
he often does back home.

Whenever he's here
my winter shrinks, green-faced.

Oh, even a god dies alone.
I won't complain or sob,
although my heart is sore,
gripped by numbing sleep.
I must remain mute like an earthworm
and dense like a tree.
If only I could rise and swim again,
again commanding my clan-
ka, keck, quack.

Oh, how can I thank the Wus enough?
They cut the lines and dislodged the hooks.
They cleaned the maggots off my wounds
and even gave me a pill before
they put me back into the lake.
Now I'm going to rejoin my tribe
and tackle their new chief.
First they should know I'm still alive-
ka, keck, quack.