by Xi Yongjun
     trs. by Sophia Kidd

Bupu River flows through the poem’s first line
beyond the poem   a kingfisher flies in from western hills
coming past lives and feathers of the river
the bird wants before appearing in line five, to land firmly upon
a reed
i know deeply the kingfisher is a flash of lightening,
staring fixedly at the water’s surface
deep in mediation, it soon catches a carp
then elegantly collecting sounds of wave
before Honggu wakes up   it sings the river
awakening Bupu River’s feathers
Bupu River deepens kingfisher’s blue hue
which in the poem’s last line   dips its wing into dawn   and alights

December 8, 2017, Chengdu, China

by Xi Yongjun
     trs. by Sophia Kidd

I rush before daybreak   to ask
a drop of dew on its grass tip
the guard who’s fallen asleep
using ancient alchemy
I extract morning light from a star, the pond
is an eye of morning   water lilies bloom
I walk the streets   each stem blesses
bougainvillaea’s wedding veil
it’s as if gods beseech them to open
a swath of American myrtle   without the tailcoat
Uncle Sam   help our city’s flora
burst forth in flame   a youth
slows his silver motor bike, a dandy    he
sounds the alarm of a new age for the city
and the crape myrtle in Tu Fu’s Thatched Cottage
remains thin as the poet

I walk the street   a gardener
head in flowers   wants to shred the green belt
into pieces of cloud   use
rough hands like branches to
clean up past lives and dust from the blade
a girl turns toward him   again and again
a butterfly on her braid   deep in meditation
beside him   trees busy building a ladder
to send the city skyward

not far away   workers tear down
an old building   wave hammers
awaken flashes   raise church bells
musical scales   feathers of pigeon
slow them down
as they raze this plot
for growing sky-rises
there is still a patch
of breathing soil
if possible   i will serve it faithfully

the street cleaning car moves slowly   a gospel
this routine of John the Baptist   i want for it
to brighten each September day

September 1, 2015, Chengdu, China

by Wang Ping

In Greek, tele means remote, and port is a harbor to transport,
send, carry, bear or deliver matter from A to B, for example,
to teleport man from earth to moon, without breaking apart.
Newton’s faithful shout: it’s ridiculous, anti-gravity, anti-physics!
Quantum believers say it has nothing to do with the physical.
It transports only a state, a code of the man, his mind, thought . . .
one particle at a time, from A to B.  If true, is love
a state of mind?  If not, what code does it deliver as it travels
thousands of miles?  Why does it produce such fragrance,
such fiery display?  And the heart — Is it a matter or code,
with its blood, muscles, veins and all the strings attached to
another ether?  How does it move stars and universe without lifting a finger? What about fear, anger, hatred . . . magnified to destroy?  And kindness, what about kindness, and her child named Joy — Grown, harvested and teleported by poets, through pain and sorrow Through persistent dreams?  What about dreams, the darkly port Where we fly, fight and cry, bodiless, screaming to get out
Or pray to stay in?  Do you call it real, or just a code —
A dream that the world can’t live without?
What’s the code in the prayer from a hungry child to God,
Alone at night, on her knees?  We do not need to know
What’s in her prayer, or in the package, says the quantum
physicist, just the way Amazon delivers Santa’s gifts
from heaven to earth.  The postman doesn’t know, must not know
what’s inside, yet children squeal with delight upon its arrival.
And oh, declares the scientist, nobody can peek or scan into the box
because observation changes its original state.  Thus when A is
teleported to B, C will arrive, forever as mystical original.
Holy C, this teleportation matter feels more like poetry now —
its process, its light and weight, its quantum leaps between
A & B, its manner of delivery in the speed of light,
its use of code to teleport our birthright — Hope —
that no force can copy, change or take away.
I’m no quantum physicist, just a self-claimed poet.
But I know, I feel for certain,

When my heart is scanned a million times with your lies
When my name and body is tasered with your hypocrisy
It still teleports the same code — Love — to 7.8 billion hearts
50 pulses a minute, 1.5 billion beats for each life and
the infinite particles that make a heart a heart
Uncertain, but always in its original state

by Wang Ping

First Order of Things
— For Gary Snyder

Today I rowed my first 12k in the Mississippi, and earned my first blisters.

The first shovel into the thawed earth, rich with compost from food scraps, bones, eggshells, leaves, worms, bacteria, rain, ice and patience.

The first planting of potatoes from last year’s garden, pink sprouts and green skin, excited to re-enter the earth.

The first breaking of dirt in my hands, dark earth promising another year’s harvest.

The first sprouting: garlic, leeks, dandelions, peonies, lilies, fiddleheads, creeping Charlie, all beautiful and delicious. (The first harvest from my garden, first sautéed egg with garlic leek, first robin’s visit from Texas and old nest under my roof, asking why I’m not sharing food with her. First filling of bird bath, after a long freeze, first line of chickadees splashing ecstasy.

First meal under the sun, listening to Gary’s “Long Hair” from 40 years ago, his fingers gnarly from fixing the generators for power and poetry, living off grid on the Sierra, my fingers blessed with blisters and black earth, fingers that know how to dig, plant, nurse, cook, feed, write poetry, fingers that refuse to point, woke, destroy, accuse, sow hate.

Fingers that vow to spread love and love only, through labor and devotion . . . intertwining west and east, mountain and prairie.

And then the deer runs inside me
The plants sprout inside me
The robin sings in chorus with chickadees
The garden blooms inside me
The Mississippi flows through me
And the world, the cosmos
As I eat my first bowl of garlic leek with eggs in the garden, under the sun, listening to poetry