BIOGRAPHICAL SUMMARY
OF THE AUTHOR
Li Ying, native to Fengrun county, Hebei province, was born in Jinzhou city, Liaoning province on Dec. 8, 1926. He was admitted into the Chinese Dept. of the College for Literature, Beijing University in 1945, and engaged in progressive movements of students during study. After his graduation in 1949, he served as a reporter, a chief editor of literary magazines, Director of the Art and Literature Press, Minister of Cultural Bureau, General Political Department of People’s Liberation Army, Commissioner of the Chinese Writers’ Association (CWA) and Vice President of the Chinese Arts and Literature League (CALL). Now he has been honored as a member of CWA and CALL, acting Vice-president of the Chinese Poetry Society, Managing Member of a board of directors of the Chinese Seminar of International Friendship, Member of a board of directors of the Sino-Japanese Friendship Association and Editorial Member of Poetry, etc.
He began to write and publish poetry in 1942, collected his volume of poetry Seedling Under the Stone City with a classmate as coauthor in 1944. He published his first volume of poetry Gun in 1948. Since the foundation of New China, he has continued writing poetry except for the interruption of the ten-year catastrophe in China. Up until now he has published 48 volumes of both long and short poetry collections, and collection on poetics as well. His poetry collection I Take My Pride in Figuring Myself As a Tree won the first prize of the First National Poetry Collection Award in 1983; Spring Smile won the prize for excellence of the Second National Poetry Collection Award in 1985; Life is a Single Leafwon the Prize. Award for Poetry of the First Lu Xun National Literature Prize in 1997; China of My Own won the award for excellence of the National Book Prize. Furthermore, Traveling in the USA, On Burning Battlefield and his long poemsMourning in January, A Great Festival of Nationality,A City and A Star, etc. won many prizes respectively. There appear several specialized publications on the research of his poetry such as The Collection of Research on Li Ying, New Poetry in Special, On the Poetry of Li Ying, etc. In the early 1980s’, he was twice present at Sino-American Writers’ Conference and visited over ten countries in Africa, the Americas, Asia and Europe. Many collections of his poetry have been translated into different languages and published overseas.
Tr. Hai An
CELESTIAL DRAGON
With sparkling scales and fiery eyes
It thunders round in flashes of lightning
High in the sky or deep into the sea
There throbs boundless and great vitality
It is the Yellow River and the Great Wall
It is a roaring and surging nationality
A new century reverberates with drums and bells
Look! Billions of people initiate a new march
Beijing, Dec. 1999
THE YELLOW RIVER
Whatever surging waves or deep hidden current
Oh, Mother! You are the root of nationality
Down from the farthest sky, through boundless field
You are pouring from above a great spirit of life
It is you who foster gene and blood
We cultivate the noble nature, brave and confident
Now, time passed as the clouds go farther
Look! We have grown from infancy to manhood
Beijing, Aug. 1999
THE LAND
A traveler ready to go far away
Takes up a handful of soil
The earth, the root of his life
Makes his heart beat more strongly
A wanderer back from traveling
Bends to kiss his nursing ground
Dedicates his tears and blood to her
Deep into the earth buries his heart
Beijing, June. 1996
BEATING SONG
No further than you could we reach for
No sunshine than you love us more
Listen to the beating song of ancestors
To the original pulse and breath of our life
In sweeping rain was buried the ancient history
The song yet more and more authentic
Urges us to sow and reap, along with poetry
Walks barefooted into the bosom of the earth
Beijing, June. 1996
AFTERGLOW OVER
THE YANGTZE RIVER
Down the headwaters
Flows a torrential current
Nine thousand years across the moor
Nine thousand years through the mountains
There blows the wind
Blowing the wings of a low-flying bird
Into the boundless sky
When the riptide rolling
Across the swelling chest of sailors
The broken bits of gold sunset
Glimmer in the wine cup
All are exhausted
All have found beds to pass their night
Except for the waves
There should be a shining lighthouse
Upriver and downriver
Nine thousand years extend a vast water
Even the earth throbs slightly-----
What a dignified and magnificent subject
What a vigorous and brilliant thought
At the end of the horizon
The blood of a strong nationality
Falls into the Yangtze River
Nanjing, May 1987
CITY IN SNOW
The first snow
Makes the city lost, hard to find
Only the potsherds out of the ashes
Gaze at the remaining wall and golden palace
Dreams suspended there
The second snow
Makes the city shiver in the worn padded cotton
All the sleepless stones sprout
Vigorous cypress meditate in the narrow alley
Clouds suspended there
The third snow
Urges the city to arise in feather-padded jacket
There leap the brisk steps of warmth
Flowers bloom everywhere, birds fly happily
Songs suspended there
Beijing, Dec.11, 1992
FLOWER
A small flower blooms at the window
As red as blood, as a firing muzzle
Bright as the sparkling eyes of a child
Pretty as a star of deep emotions
Never withers as an eternal smile
Everlasting as a diamond
Vibrant as a resonant note
Sweet as a ripe grape…
Removed from the front line four years earlier
It blooms every year, reminding me of the sentry
Up to now I am unable to know its name
Oh, my Motherland! Let me name it “Freedom”
Beijing, July 1982
SMALL FLOWER
IN STONE RIFT
One or two wild seeds
Casually blown into a stone rift
One or two fearless flowers
Unyieldingly blossom in the ground
Everyone could feel her misery
Everyone could feel her beauty in heart
The only red of her life
Is dedicated to you, only to you
That is all of her love, all of her blood
Do you know? My great land!
Helan Mountain, Dec., 1998
A BOAT WITHIN THE SHOAL
Originally integrated with the sea
It takes the stormy sky as its mother
Now seagulls and fishes return home
It lies across the shoal in sunset
Alone with the forsaken seaweeds
No, the mottled hull
Reveals its rich experience
It stays here only for cleansing the wound
Look! The keel aglitter of its adamant will
Its bow sharper than a knife
Shrugging its shoulder, it looks up
And turns to the wave at the side
The tide across the sea surging in heart
Bones and muscles, wings and fins
Now all its belongings, with its shadow
Wait for the next sail in silence
Qingdao, August 4, 1992
SLEEPING SAILOR
A motionless wave
Ripples the glamour of water
All sunk down, tides and storms
Bury the endless joy and sorrow
A jagged reef
Listens to the roaring of a billow
Blood burnt out, the remnant bone
Stands firmly overlooking the sea
A silent anchor
Runs deep and dignified
Its life, down-to-earth
Demonstrates birth and death
He sleeps deeply on the beach
As on the bed of his homeland
As an anchor, a reef or a solid wave
His heaving bosom broader than the sea
Qingdao, August 5, 1992
SOLDIER CRAB
“Soldier crab”, renamed “soldier shrimp”, a crustacean, has small, short feet, and rudimentary appendages. The first pair of feet is cheliform, the right one bigger than the left one. The body is hidden in the shell; it crawls on the beach or deep at the bottom of the sea.
I come to the ebbing water
All the soldier crabs
Hide themselves in panic
But one left behind coming
Turns its face to me whispering
In the pillaging world
No matter to be called shrimp or crab
I only want to show you
An embodied definition
Easy to live in shame
Hard to live upright
Instead of hiding yourself
Prepare your own pincers
Yes, nothing is more vital than the great pincers
Life is so cruel and realistic
Qingdao, August 8, 1992
RECALLING QU YUAN
AT MILUO RIVER
As thin as an orchid
With only an upturned beard
With a pot holding the world
He plunged into the rolling river
Suffering and indignation
Boil the river as casting down a burning mold
The seething water surging in the cold moon
Who might find the key lost in misery?
Twisted with the reed, deep in the sandbank
A hundred and eighty riddles rusted in the mist
Answer please! Answer please!
Two thousand and five hundred years for a poem only
Changsha, August 1993
YEARNING IN
HAINAN ISLAND
As the moon rises between
Two palm trees in Hainan
There will flow my love
As a bubbling stream
Hainan glitters as rare metal
Each leaf plays a musical tone
Brittle and thin, moist and warm
Even a stone so emotional
For your soulful gazing
My heart, bitter and sweet
Immersed in your song
Your wine and tears
There is a jequirity bean in Hainan
There is a blood-red bean
Leaping out of the pod
Beijing, June 1998
SANYA IN SPRING
None overcast it
Whatever eagle or seagull
The seaport against the hill
Overlooks the ocean to the South
Down sets the door of history
No more wind blows the smelly dust
No more sighs depress the thatched cottage
Only the scales mirror the town in decline
Now erect the solid metropolis
Glittering in the sunshine
The smell of the floating air
Half sugarcane, half pineapple
Taking off my feather-padded jacket
I become part of your integration
Sanya in spring, no other hearts
Bloom more like a flower than mine
Sanya, March 1998
THE YELLOW EARTH
A kind of temper
A kind of memory
Silent and implicit is the yellow earth
Eroding, burying and accumulating
It cultivates maturity in a furious motion
Limitless and powerful
It shows great fantasy and expectancy
Listen to the blowing wind and pouring rain
Listen to the sun rising and stars falling
The yellow earth reveals a depressed power
A power is a beauty
It illustrates a notion of time
An inscription of time
An eagle flying over the yellow clouds
Reminds me of countless
Mountains beyond mountains
Rivers beyond rivers…
Northwestern Shanxi, Oct. 1987
WILD JUJUBE TREE
Iron-cast bough as being printed
Grows high on the cliff
Among the thicket and thorns
Even stones feel astonished
It is a wonder for her to grow
Hard yet happy
Her petals small and weak
Tremble in the fierce wind
Poor and miserable
As the descendant of a mountaineer
Her life moved to tears
Painful yet honorable
Her glimmering thorns
Tug at the arm of a shepherd
Only to offer him fruits
As red as the flaming sun
Bitter are her tears and sweat
Yet sweet in heart
Beijing, Jan. 1989
PASSING THE REED DITCH
The ochre sea floats
Our green island
Our small oasis
As a fallen leaf
Shoals heavy
Oasis light
Honest wheat ripens rather late
Timid rapes blossom out of the village
Aspens watch the cottage
Made of pure yellow soils
The blue sky high
The village low
Out of chimneys rise warm smoke
On the rammed-earth wall leaps the sunshine
There overflow laughter and wine
With sparrows chirping about
A path narrow
A hut small
Lonely are the pebbles of the exposed riverbed
A shepherdess is singing on the riverbank
Her red dress turns into a landscape
With hoofprints like small flowers blooming about
Clouds white
Ballads sweet
Tianshuijin, July 22, 1993
WITHERED-LEAF BUTTERFLY
An undressed butterfly
Leans on the branch of a tree, maybe
She is the first leaf withered in spring
Solemnly watching the world alive
I ask: “why don’t you
Dress yourself colorfully?”
“I don’t want to be a flower”, she says
“I’m not a butterfly unable to dance
Nor a poor and ugly one
My life is vigorous,” she says
“Life is most beautiful in the world
Which makes the earth lean and tremble”
“Don’t associate me with winter
I wonder if I am like a withered leaf
Or vice versa”, she says
“I want to tell you
My being is myself
Yes, I want to tell you
How rich is nature
And how cruel and hard is life”
Ruili, April 13, 1991
THE YI’S FOLK DANCE
On the pasture alongside the mountain
Burns the campfire and passion
Swings the reflective silver necklace
Mad are the lute strings in arms
By this way to present their lives
They enrich the existence of their own
Confiding their love and illusion
They reveal a power and rustic beauty
Mountains blend into their rough bones
Rivers flow with their ancient blood
They are the stones and water in the field
Shaking the earth with their shouts and rushing steps
All the horn cups fill the mellow wine
Lingering eyes brim with happiness
All the lantanas blossom with song
Each boot loses its way home
Chuxiong, July 2000
THE GREAT
NORTHWEST CHINA TODAY
If you see the endless desert
Rolling the black fire in the broiling sun
You have come to the great Northwest China
If you see a growing tree
Floundering with rage
You have come to the great Northwest China
If you see the stirring wheel and headlight
Flinging the festive horizon all night
You have come to the great Northwest China
If you see the tankers and containers
Marching into the desert and border cities
You have come to the great Northwest China
If you find the fairy tale changing into the landscape
From the first page of a newspaper to each window
You have come to the great Northwest China now
Beijing, May 2001
DABAN CITY
You are an island in a sea of vast desert
Famed throughout the country
An island sensitive of love
Yet as a cloud too far away
Alone is your personality
All taken by the storm
Only poems remain
Several walls painted white
Smoke rising from an earthen chimney
Three girls peddle eggs, two old men sell pancakes
Dusty trucks rest and move further
Lonesome is your life
Tambourines pause, strings broken
Only songs remain
Watermelons unseen, carriages lost
A pain to miss an exciting appointment
Emerges from the eyes
Fastened on the braid
Beautiful is your yearning
A naked love flaming bright in heart
Only dreams remain
March 1989------- Sept. 1990
GRAPES
Fibers of roots reach the fiery mountain
Fibers of roots extend to the great desert
They say the world
Remains too hot or too cold
Tines of leaves suffer the blustering wind
Tines of leaves withstand the scorching sun
They say in the world
Exist too many hardships and bitterness
Then they bear
A cluster of heavy grapes
A cluster of heavy and sober silences
A cluster of deep meditation and love songs
Long fibers twine around you
Sweet juice clings to you
Along the oblivious desert
One heart after another is dedicated to you
Beijing, March 1989-------- Sept.1990
A SMALL GRASS-LAKE
Is the small lake converged by
Fluid tones and revolving rhythms
Sliding from tambourines?
When the twinkling stars at night
Swim as fishes in the sky
Bleat of homeward sheep change into
Flourishing reeds and fragrant waterweed
Ah, beyond the oleaster, desert and camel
Mountains close and seas afar
The grass-lake hidden deep in the highlands
Is the gorgeous blush of a silk weaver
Or the mellow wine of a hunter
In reeds disappears a chirping sparrow
Its teeth gnaw at destiny
Its feather treasured forth in a diary
Like a free cloud or a single leaf
Or a beautiful lyric
Ah, beyond the oleaster, desert and camel
The sky close and dreams afar
March 1989------- Sept. 1990
A GRAIN OF SAND
A grain of sand falls to my shoulder
From the great desert vast and afar
It reminds me of the rolling dune
Of the lofty Mount Qomolangma and
Of the endless waves
Dazzling and choking
A grain of sand primitive and dense
A vigorous life meditates on my shoulder
Confiding to one another
Its heart throbs with mine
At the moment nearest to eternity
Dedicate it to philosophy and poetry
A grain of sand falls to my shoulder
A camel of dreams I would like to be
Ningxia, Dec. 1998
AIR-SLAKED STONE
Deep in the desert around Jiayuguan are strewn many unique stones. Composed ofmultiple elements of different colors and textures, the stone is naturally carved into fascinating “air-slaked stone” through long-term exposure to sunshine and rain. The stone is everlastingly appreciated for its inimitable style and lingering charm.
Don’t disturb their dream
They will feel pained
Don’t bring them back to the city
They will feel ashamed in a sitting room
The frost-bitten, sun-burnt and war-fired stones
Belong only to the great Northwest China
Each of them vivid and sacred
If you come here in a moonless evening
They will tell of history with a metallic voice
And proudly show you their bones and teeth
Fed on the last blood without tears and sweat
The horse-trodden, axe-chopped and blood-soaked stones
Are wounded with countless scars
Each of them vivid and proud
Jiayuguan, July 23, 1993
FLYING AGAINST THE WIND
A brown bird
Rather than a single leaf
Flying against the wind
Over the exhausted wasteland
In the raging storm
It falls near to the ground
Before swiftly soaring again
Its crouching claw stretches out bravely
Its almost broken wings
Ever stroke breathlessly
It struggles for fearless flying
Ever onwards
A fire flames in the storm
A flower blooms in the air
The world vivid solely for you
Even with the endless wind and rain
Flying against the wind in Qilian Mountain
The bird is the most beautiful ever seen
Qilian Mountain, July 24, 1993
AFTERGLOW
OVER GRASSPLOTS
The grassplot extends as an elegant curve
The curved slope erects a white tower
The motley spire aloft in the sky
Flings pieces of colorful flags
Flickering far in the distance
There comes a lone Lama
Whose red cassock tapping his black dog
From one grassplot after another
At this moment over the grassplot
The green, white, yellow, red and black
Blend in perfect harmony
A strong customary painting silently
Hangs in the afterglow over Shatuo Temple
A sense of simplicity, serenity and mystery
Along with its long silhouette silently
Hangs in the afterglow over Shatuo Temple
Waiting for the fall of evening
Beijing, March 1999
SALT LAKE
The milk of mother
The sweat of father
And their tears
Sad and turbid
Flow a thousand years
Till one thousand and one
They converge here
Become crystal salts
Prismal and pure
Without any impurity
A bitter life lowers the ground
Dachaidan Military Depot, August 2, 1994
IMPRESSION ON xizang
If you stay in xizang, you are sure to
Come across a brilliant magnificence
Boundless snowcapped mountains
Countless wavy tiles and red walls
Old temples with golden spires
Cloisters deeply across the doors
Silently clasped with solitude and simplicity
Solemnly with honest prayers and swift changes of history
If you stay in xizang, you are sure to
Feel the mysterious power of religion
Numerous rings rotate in hands
Thousands of beads glare around necks
Limitless bells chime together with trumpets
Figures of Buddha innumerable
In the smoky fire of ghee lamps
Lection bless the world with luck and happiness
Lhasa, August 1994
MY POETRY OF xizang
If my poetry of xizang
Were unable to fly as high as an eagle
It would be buried in the storm
If unable to be as strong as a yak
It would die in the valley of snow
If unable to bear barley
It would wither in the highland
If my poetry of xizang
Were unable to be as firm as a stone
It would burn to ashes
In the fire
I’d like my poetry of xizang
Be an eagle or a yak
Like barley or stone
From blood to will to soul
Strong, solemn and beautiful
Simple and magic
Bitter and tragic
I’d like my poetry of xizang
Be at least the deep shadow
Of their lives
Beijing, Oct. 1994
GIVE ME BACK
Give me back space
Give me back the way home
Give me back forests, earth and wind
Let the tree free from dreaming an axe or saw
Let the earth bury the fallen sighs and tears
Let the wind flickering free
Give me back time
Give me back wings and fins
Sky, clouds and water
Give me back the lost youth and great expectations
Give me back the life, its quality and value
Give me back the life, its order, reason and flower
Give me back the loyal love refined from minerals
The mature sun rises in the morning
The mature stars twinkle in the evening
Honest as a key to a lock
Trustful in their mutual future
I don’t want the whole sky
But only to open the window
Give me back a world
Fresh as a morning after rain
A world awakening with energy
Beijiing, June 30, 1994
STILL LIFE
The whole world is rotating at high speed
Only they far from the whirlpool of storm
A bunch of roses before two wineglasses
Expresses warm and fragrant love
Two mandarin fishes plus a jug of wine
Present soft-drunken silence
At the end of time
These lines, colors and shadows
Stand still at the first or the last gesture
Against the uproaring world
Do not ask what is hidden in them
Soundless life
Soundless years
Condense here into an eternal view
All sink down
In actual life
There is no silence
Even the rusty time
Flakes off in tears
Beijing, Feb. 1994
DEEP IN LOVE
Deep in love extends a world
Deep in blood extends a life
Only poems reach love in tears
Between the birth and death
Between the sun and the earth
Sufferings grow into a tree
Beijing, Oct. 1998
ON A PHOTOGRAPH
A green melody
Reverberates at windows
Faraway is my dream
A moving landscape
Makes life clear
Beautiful is my dream
Beijing, May 1995
A KEY
A solemn key
Solemn as metal
A common key
Common as neglected
Whichever to me or
To its own keyhole
It is absolutely loyal
Before opening the door
It says “Come in, please”
Chairs, potted flower, books and pen
Waiting for me in silent breath
I sit down to have a teatime in the lamplight
I take to my bed with the curtains down
Shutting the wind and rain outside
As well as the noisy city, mountains and oceans
After closing the door
It says “Bye-bye”
It helps us maintain order
I praise it
Hoping to say farewell
Someday in the future
Beijing, March 1993
A CANDLE
A candle burns before a soul of the deceaced
In a hall filled with pains, guiding
The last return trip of a person
It hears many pale dirges and elegies
I wonder how to console it
A sign of wail burning
In a long, long night
A candle burns in a wedding feast
Happily blooming as a flower
It stands near the heart with pride
Gazing at it, you will feel warm and sweet
Its halation is a palace
A traditional blessedness burning
In a short, short evening
Whatever cry or joy
Whatever tears or honey
They are shed deep from a rib of the chest
With pure and holy emotions
It knows the distance between them
Happiness and suffering are halves of life
There is no Fool’s Day in China
A candle is a poem of truth
Beijing, Feb. 1994
RECALLING MY CHILDHOOD
My childhood through hunger and poverty
Was sodden in my mother’s tears
I buried it in the wasteland
It grew into clumps of wild grasses
It had a thorny stem and bitter leaves
Swaying in the storm all day long
Without flowers and fruits
I grow up earlier with pains in heart
Decades of years pass in a flash
I still recall the clumps of unbending grasses
Sad, sterile and tameless, its shape
Resembling a wild fire burning angrily
Beijing, July 1998
DISTANCE
Hanging from the forehead of April
The willow twigs are close to the water
With catkins wafted in the air
My mother broke a sallow
To make a whistle
April is noisy and happy
My small feet stained with spring mud
Hanging from the forehead of September
The willow twigs are close to the water
With leaves fallen in the air
My wife flicked the sallow to lean
Close to me on a bench
September is warm and silent
Where to hang the moon without willow
Hanging from the forehead of January
The willow twigs are close to the water
With tresses broken in the air
I lead along my grandson with a sallow
Walking on the frozen river
January is solemn and profound
Deep within life glitters the distance
Beijing, March 1996
THE STATUE OF LU XUN
Only the stone from atop Mount Qomolangma
Could sculpt his figure
A clear-minded soul
A person with a hatchet face
Even the enemy must look up to
Old epoch was shuddering in blood
His heart throbbing in pain
An ox bowed its head in labour
A lion uttered a roar in anger
His spear polished in bile and blood
Now every spark in the stone
Burns his spirit and thought
He told us with his life
Hate older than love
Dignity and freedom brighter than the sun
Beijing, Sept. 18, 2001
YESTERDAY
He has the same
Beautiful face as today
I could not meet him farther
He sent me ahead today
And returned alone
All of a sudden
I recall something lost
And go back to look for it
But find no way to return
Before a window only
I gaze at a leaf falling
In spirals
Resounding far away with
An echo
Beijing, Oct.1994