Lines Written on Swallow Rock Overlooking the Yangtze
It’s four in the afternoon. I go up and gaze out at the river.
It’s a drizzly day
water and sky
a vast leaden uniformity
flowing motionlessly away
emptiness is my only complete inheritance
Wildflowers blaze at my feet. A heron circles over the water.
Now the emptiness has increments of measure,
deepens itself by one flower’s flame . . .
the water flows motionlessly away
the person sitting on the stone is a different me
In the twilight of life, a poet becomes a creature without a self.
His understanding of history is more radical
Out of emptiness he makes an airy butterfly, and catches it
2024
About the translators
Austin Woerner is a Creative Fellow in Chinese-English literary translation at the University of Leeds.
Emily Xinyao Lei is an alumna of the MA in English Literature course at the School of English, University of Leeds.