Chitra Ganesh, How to Assemble a Flying Car (detail), 2018, linocut on tan BFK Rives. Courtesy of the artist & Durham Press.
The Sun Singers
Early autumn dusk
People climb stairs stained by the bloody broken
Sun
Man woman
Men and women
Loafing or in a rush
On the street
Ads and sailor shirts
The player talks through his sobbing guitar
Their songs fill the whole summer
They’ve rasped their throats hoarse
Singing till deep autumn singing till broad leaves
Fall
They are waiting
Waiting in solitude waiting stubbornly
Crowds quiver crowds stop in their tracks
This season is a borderline
As are rivers and marshes
Their songs are tantalizing
Their songs grieve, are solemn
Those singers those sun singers
Stubborn confirmation forever confirms
Behind the shrieking wind and bitter rain of the 20th
Century
There must be a heavy snow
Crowds open windows
Crowds throng outside
Crowds will join in chorus
Play guitar and sing out
All the fears of the 20th century
Will resonate in countless songs
This is proclamation
Among all other voices
This is the singer’s voice
Coming from his chest
A voice from the canyons of his throat
A voice of gentleness
Listen: the place exposing sunlight and air
Also exposes me
Exposes the earthquaking growth
Deep autumn dusk
The singers’ shadow floats across the land
Their hearts merge with the shadow of sunlight
With sun they will
Expose all the secrets of the 20th century
Bei Ling is a poet and essayist, as well as the founder and editor of the exile literary journal Tendency. He was awarded the PEN-U.S. West Freedom of Writing Award in 2000, the same year he was arrested in China for publishing and printing a literary journal and was expelled to the United States. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The New Republic, Chicago Review, The Los Angeles Times Book Review, AGNI, Southern Indiana Review, and Manoa. (2001)
Tony Barnstone is the son of prolific writer Willis Barnstone. His most recent book is Tongue of War: From Pearl Harbor to Nagasaki (BkMk Press, 2009), which won the John Cairdi Prize for Poetry. (updated 7/2010)
Willis Barnstone is a poet and distinguished professor of comparative literature at Indiana University. A former Guggenheim Fellow, Fulbright Professor, and Pulitzer Prize Finalist in poetry, he is the author of The Poetics of Translation: History, Theory, Practice (Yale University Press, 1993) and Algebra of the Night: New & Selected Poems, 1948–1998 (Sheep Meadow Press, 1999). His literary translation of the New Testament is forthcoming from Penguin Putnam. (updated 2001)
Xi Chuan is a Chinese poet who since 1985 has published poetry, essays, and translations and now works as an editor at the New China News Agency. (2001)