Poetry:
I AM THE ETERNAL SPIDER
I am the eternal
eight-legged spider
my web stretches between the window
and television screen
ad infinitum
between the hollow time
of real and virtual deaths
I can see everything from my center—
a bud appeared on a branch
a pop singer sang a familiar song
on TV
a woman gave birth to a son again
a soldier exploded
before the bud could fully open
you first see the light
then you hear the sound
(the laws of nature never change
unlike the laws of conscience)
the light
the sound
the dust
the shoes
a mother screams and falls down
the soil is an underground museum
here is a soldier four centuries after death
and here—only four hours after
everything repeats identically . . . which means
something must be wrong
I am the eternal mourner
in my four black veils
my grandfather was killed by a Turk
my father was killed by a German
my son was killed by an Azeri
and yesterday my daughter gave birth to a son
all killed
all killed
all killed
history repeats itself identically
it’s time to elect a new Barabbas
I am the four-part choir
of an eternal jeremiad
I am the velvety mezzo-soprano of a virgin
I am the lyrical tenor of a new bride
I am the restrained baritone of a widow
I am the gruff bass of my grandmother, eyes dim with cataracts
I am the eternal eight-thighed nothingness
my grandmother knelt and gave birth to a son
my mother knelt and gave birth to a son
I knelt and gave birth to a son
my daughter knelt and gave birth to a son
our sons crawl
stand up
and fall dead
the oceans need the drowned
I am the eternal dancer
of time
the same cabaret quartet
the same eight-thighed chain of muscles
and the same dance of death
beneath the flashing lights of guns
my grandmother bends her left knee and looks right
my mother bends her left knee and looks right
I bend my left knee and look right
my daughter bends her left knee and looks right
(how I hate these plagiarized knees)
I am the goddess of war
in a metal-hued
blood-red
camouflage skirt
with bombs instead of breasts
time touches my nipples
and falls down
I will always be around . . . that’s not the question
I just need four moods of sadness
and it’s summer here all year round
THE SPRING
The spring –
anointed spy
in camouflage,
concealed
like a tyrant,
expands its borders
slowly
day by day
and
suddenly
a blood-scented flower
blooms at night—
The war –
a metallic chessboard
the boys collide and fall down
with a clanging thud
the border
is on the asphalt
while under the ground
the bones of enemy soldiers
embrace
It’s spring . . . the scent of muscles
the eternal revelries of rats
that have been around since the world’s beginning
in the meantime, the hordes of boys will move
slightly more to the north
like the bison and . . . disappear
time is afraid of nothing but rodents
THE WAR ON MY TELEVISION SCREEN
I push a button on the remote control
and I am served the war
along with my coffee
in bed
the shooting is soon interrupted
with an advertisement for a new
kind of lipstick
and then again
a gas mask is swinging from a nail
like an elephant’s trunk
it’s springtime . . . and yet
the blood-red like an aggressor
is gradually taking over my screen
that’s a fallen soldier
that’s not an unripe fruit
underneath the tree
spoiled from hale—
look at those leaves
sweating on the branches
as if they’ve fought all night long
it’s midnight . . . the TV turns off
stopping the metallic scream
of the soldier’s mother
I will myself to believe
that I was watching
a movie
and
that now in the backstage
the solder is changing
in front of a mirror
collecting my hair to the side
I caress with my cheek the silk
of my new pillow
it’s springtime . . .
the Earth’s season of violets
is there not a single word
a sigh or a sound
that would put an end
to war at once
like a word before an orgasm
that suddenly ends
the act of love?
it’s still kindergarten
on my screen
the time after lunch
soldiers with childlike faces
lying next to each other in rows
under white sheets
as pure and hermetic
as snow
MY UNCLE A DISABLED WAR VETERAN
. . . He would spin his walking stick
demonstratively in the air
three times
every six steps
(he had turned his loss into a ceremony
not to lose the charm of his gait
of a triumphant colonel)
“In the northeast . . . below the river”
—he could show the exact coordinates
of his left leg on the map
THE SOLDIER WAS MOTIONLESS AND NOT BREATHING
The soldier was motionless and not breathing
when the golden-haired doctor
came in
there was a promise of resurrection
in her eyes
like in the gaze
of a war goddess
I would’ve liked to be
in medieval Venice
when it was fashionable
to wear masks without occasion
and walk from St. Peter’s Basilica
to St. Mark’s Square
barefooted
and
burn the effigy
of war
(I have been traveling like a pirate for a while
with a black eye-patch across my face
half the number of the dead is enough
to turn me mad—
my heart would burst if it doubled)
God
how many more will have to explode
on this street
for us to call it the “end of the world”?
(why is this number not in the Bible?)
my head will erupt
if I don’t squeeze my temples with my palms
my brain will burst in a fountain—
for in my dream
Kafka is pacing in a small room
and moaning as always,
angry Baudelaire is ripping
the thousand-colored flowers of evil
with his back turned,
Charents
is urinating on the carved door of heaven
it’s morning . . . I wake up in my bed
to see a new explosion on the screen
are the soldier and the doctor
making love
or are they lying dead
embraced in each other’s arms?
A SERIOUS DREAM
Women—
if you don’t want war
don’t look at the soldier
with admiration
and you’ll see how he’ll put
his shiny arms
down
without delay
as if a child asking for attention
I close my eyes and the boys
are fighting with water guns
and when the golden field sways
over the cracked sands of the desert
it’s the sabre dance next
and the boys are fighting
against locusts
or they’re driving them out one by one
with giant
multicolored fans
there is my hero—
Mushegh
with the most locusts in his bag
my heart is yours
from now on
hold me tight
let’s make love till dawn
in the fields of wheat
that you just saved
p.s.
I have a thousand scenarios like this for war’s death
THE ONLY GOOD NEWS IS . . . SOCHI
Sixty-six people
died in Ukraine
thirty in Syria
a policeman is dragging
a soldier’s body
Aleppo is burning in flames
the only bloodless news
is from Sochi
the Olympic ice of the battlefield
where couples dance
for gold
they turn in the air
three times
and win
they always win
while everyone loses
at war
henceforth they are my heroes—
the half-naked girl in the skates
and the boy
who flawlessly catches the girl’s body
in midair
and carries her on his strong shoulder
as a gift
elegantly gliding
amid applause
though before
my hero was Cleopatra
with her Roman sandals
black hair
straight bangs covering her forehead
I can’t say I haven’t dreamed
of lounging on a gilt-edged chair
carried on the shoulders
of my four surreptitious lovers
like a demigod
and to have armies and thousands of elephants
clashing against each other
while I sleep with the victor each night
but that was yesterday —
today my newest military dream
is the shiny smooth ice-rink
my newest king is the chess king
let them fight from now on
with their funny crowns
and let only wooden soldiers die
falling bloodlessly onto their sides
another man died from a bomb in Gaza
taking with him ten others
Aleppo is still in flames
a firefighter is dragging a soldier’s body
the only bloodless news
is from Sochi
a place of escape and beauty
what I am most afraid of
is beauty losing meaning …
the referee blows his whistle
and they move—
the three Olympic
gods
my new hero—the half-naked girl in skates
is in the middle
LIKE AN ARALEZ[1]
I am on this side of the Arax
again
with my grandmother’s doll
that survived miraculously
hidden under her
blouse
with a terrified gaze
unspeaking
for me, the border
is a river—
my gaze drowns
before reaching the shore
and
I am left with nothing but language
to lick the receding shore
like a wound
. . . and the land tells me everything
we are still on this side of the Arax
me and my survivor doll
who like my mother is a virtuoso
in talking without words
NUCLEAR DISASTER IN JAPAN
One year later
the radioactive man
returns
to his destroyed city
of radioactive ghosts
where the only thing that’s working
is the traffic light—
indifferent to the catastrophe
it continues to change colors
signaling “go” and “stop”
though there’s no one
in this city
besides the cow
that gave birth to a calf (larger than normal)
and now pushes him away
from her udder (larger than normal)
and I wonder if radiation
heightens the maternal instinct
in cows—
is the mother trying to keep her babe away
from the lethal milk—
or is it the opposite?—
the radiation
has totally killed
maternal instinct
after one year
to understand this
I read the gaze
of the only man
who walks among the ruins
quiet and reserved—as God himself
and the city beneath his feet
is like
a Noah’s ark
filled with rotting beasts
in twos
and I think
of the man-made end
of the Earth
man
and
instinct
these are questions that keep me up all night
A LONG CONVERSATION WITH MY CAT PABLO
The Greeks built citadels
Moses climbed Mount Sinai
the apostles preached
the martyrs suffered greatly
Narekatsi spoke with the Creator
Bach expanded the universe
Komitas raised the plow to the heavens
and yet another hungry child goes to sleep today
yet another cherry garden is bombed again
yet another woman goes to bed loveless . . .
it turns out . . . all of that was not enough . . . Pablo
(we still have a lot to do both you and I)
but I have slipped out of time
I have gone mad
I only respond to the ghost
and the gentle voices coming from the past
do you remember my story
about the paradise (vacation)
on the sea
the color of Mary’s dress?
everything was a lie there
Pablo
except for the captain’s curse
teach me
how to stretch so gracefully
through the loveless days of nine lives
and yawn
without regrets
the cloud has turned a strange red
—do you hear?
they’re calling you . . . from heaven
have you loved your neighbor
as yourself
Pablo?
have you turned the other cheek?
take me in your mouth—
and secretly raise me, too
you are my only hope
how good it is under your tongue
Pablo
I wish I could stay
right here
Literary Criticism:
I Am Searching For Words
…Ocean of time,
can you tell me
where the shadows of the dead lie now?
For the answer, the poet begins a search for words. This is not simply an ambition, but rather a distinct symptom of the “poet’s” calling – juxtaposing the Falknerian madman who stands outside of time with another who feels every minute of the corrosive influence of that same time-flow merge. He who is given the creative passion from above to construct “anti-time”, and upon whose “forehead the sun has etched a command / get up and kill death!” The poet lasts between this command and the consciousness of this mission, a place, /where the accounting of time runs backwards,/ where everything is as strong / as in their beginning/ andrevealing the language, as a “cypher binding all breathing things together, as a formula empowered to define the theory of everything. Poetry, as universal Esperanto. This passion is related with the common state of being – that moment of inspiration and revelation, when…
…And at that time, voices are heard from far above,
Words are dancing at the tip of my tongue –in new forms,
Before the gates of the infinite opening before me.
And my speech starts with a prayer…
With a prayer addressed not to God, but to language. The urgency of the line results from this kind of adoring infatuation with language. A distinct desire to be left alone at home with a word, and from the almost erotic passion of performing some kind of interaction with it. Also, as a result of the tension resulting from the realization of the universality of language; it’s openness and inclusiveness – its impersonality (like God’s) and its accessibility to all (like a prostitute). This nature of language makes it out to be as indifferent and unbiased towards man as nature, and also renders it incapable of intimacy, compassion and personability. This drives the poet crazy, compelling him to domesticate language by grounding it in compassion and personal love, thereby reining in the prostitute. To put it bluntly, turning God into man. The poet’s well-known temptation to dismantle and reassemble language mostly comes from this, along with his obsession to mine for new words.
I want to find the buried words
They are amniotic fluid and fish,
that sparkle in the dark
Thus, discovering the ‘word’ not as a symbol, but rather as a ‘way’ – Tao. As the staff of the whole world/without which/the spine of the universe starts cracking. This seemingly impossible task not only appears to be plausible to the poet, but also bears a measure of erotic promise. To the poet endowed with absolute sensitivity and sensuality who can “look into autumn’s eyes and see its soul/ slightly intoxicated…”, who can’t forget,”that girl’s face, bronzed like earth…” , whose ear can differentiate every sound and tell precisely, that “it is the swishing of a girlish dress/ and not a bull nibbling on some grass,” who would enter the monochrome blue of the night just to be alone with the ‘word’. And who would stay throughout the night to continue digging for that exact ‘word’.
In that sense, nothing discourages me as much as the notion that I am dealing with a translation and not the poet’s choice of words; and whether to what extent is the translator’s choice integrated with the author’s greater artistic stance. How accurately it expresses the author’s logic of preferences, style and particularly – their tonality which determines the final effect of the poem. This is especially true with Chinese, wherein words themselves are images with a direct pictographic relationship to ‘things’, therefore able to return us to our lost experience of ‘dwelling on something’, to thought and expression at the level of primitive immediacy. In this sense, each translation endangers the power of “poetic effect”. However, in this case, in this era of inflated mind and deflated spirit, Majia’s magnifying glass keeps its focus on man as he is alienated from God and tradition, with primitive excitements, cheap laughter, and guided strictly by instincts to fulfill a destiny of toppling the planet into a ravine, like in Bosch’s “Ship Full of Fools”. The reality of the absurd that either causes man to become cynical, or spiritual. Majia’s focus is to reverse the evolutionary wheel of the soul back; to return man to his humanity in order to ensure the continuity of the human experience and morality through language. In the era of globalization (i.e. westernization) Majia implies poetry as a response to Ch’an awakening of the empty mind, in which perception becomes a mirror without distinction between the inner and outer, the real and unreal, the subject and object – allowing the surroundings to become the ‘mind’s content’ – the most avant-garde way of integrating consciousness and Cosmos. Reexperiencing consciousness as an integral part of the Cosmos, the wild. Eco-poetry with clear philosophical ambitions. This kind of poetry appears to satisfy the reader’s nostalgia towards the notable line in present consumerist literature, where the contemporary writer’s propensity is to keep a safe distance from moral and existential questions. The contemporary writer hurries to integrate with the global literary market, bypassing Chinese literary traditions and adopting the experimental road of poetry. Without concrete formal or stylistic physiognomy – the writer inevitably gets mired between absurdity, nihilism and psychotherapy. As representative of Chinese renaissance literature (“Literature of Mists”, “New Wave, “Third Generation Literature”), and having adopted the dialogue style of free-verse, Majia circumvents the tradition of disdain and the tendency of radical simplification, thus, filling the crack between literary fathers and sons. Otherwise, it is not necessary to “play literature”, or try to appear contemporary. That is something from which, as Dali says, it is not possible to escape. Literally, Majia opposes the “art for art’s sake” approach, particularly today, when man’s soul and body are caught in the biological nightmare of being torn apart.“When the time is a cocktail of blood and tears / taste of hopelessness in the mouth”, when “woman and child have dreamt of reaching the sea / to find the last salvation in water / preferring to drown / rather than find themselves slaves to barbarians” (this reminds me of mothers and daughters running towards the raging river in 1915, fleeing from Turkish yataghans). Confronting such a reality, the poet makes a moral decision and without fear of platitude, states: “We are men, it is our duty to shift to our shoulders a fraction of the calamity weighing on the land of Palmyra”, while lyricism may safeguard a bit later, comparing bullet-ridden walls of passages to “…asterisks / scattering gleams in peaceful skies…” Majia refuses the contemporary tendency to ignore the beauty, tradition and elegance as if the bloody hand of warfare failed at doing just that. These lines are born not so much from mindless mental meanderings, as from the consciousness of being man. The most important dimension of Majia’s thought is the idea that all things are equally valuable and deserving of attention. This approach opens the poem to anything and it does the same for immediate experience. In this respect, this poetry can be described as both eco-poetic and as a modern extension of classical Chinese poetry. The line is empowered not so much by the desire to sing, as to the need to cry. / And now, I am examining the depths of darkness, / until tears flow from my eyes. / The poet does not stop searching for that explosive word, that with Lorcaesque duende can shake up the man who has flung a glove at nature’s face, waking him up from his lethal slumber. And who knows, why the poet writes? Perhaps because in his throat, “The Chinese and the Yi language are all kind of mixed up.” Or, perhaps because, “When he wraps his skin, it strips up bronze waves.” Or, “Because the loss of an ordinary woman does not tremble the earth.” Or, “Because people became the source of all evil.” Or, simply because, “He can’t shoot.” As a matter of fact, there is no need to remain silent because, “During silence, the will of time does not stop.”
Word-traps, labyrinths, word games, or willful complication are outside of Majia’s poetic toolbox. “… I write poetry, since I wish it to keep the finer hues of my people’s feelings and, at the same time, keep them accessible to everyone”, confesses the author. As straightforward as that. Overall, this is another song of myself, empowered by the proud and painful memories of the past, stories by Yi hunters tribe, legends, “Book of Songs” and driven by oral rhythms of the body and breath – the point of origin of all dramas. With a Whitman-ian approach to poetry – with its philanthropic and egalitarian perception of man – Majia transports words to the plains of the absolute, where they are enabled to do God-pleasing work – TO SAVE. Independent of the chosen tonality (lyrical, rhetorical, journalistic, philosophical, promotional, confessional, etc.), Majia’s line becomes recognizable thanks to that deep pulsation with which he penetrates the depths of the metaphysics of existence. With wide-open consciousness to landscape and Cosmos, Majia’s poetic voice adopts the language of ‘things’. Emphasizing the flow of the language as the machine that reproduces itself, therefore, as having a female nature of the amniotic fluid, Majia creates eco-poetry, not in the sense of reverence to the beauty of the landscape, but in the more radical sense of poetry that interweaves human consciousness with the wild. Assuming the identity of a snow leopard allows the poet to re-wild his pen and push the language into wild forms, natural rhythms, tonalities and dictions including that of someone shouting commands from one mountain peak to another. In any given time, the poet is responding to ‘sounds and furies’ of his era, to the winds that, as Baudelaire states, “…drives the poet with its double-hooked staff like a steer, yelling, ‘hey, you cursed beast! Show some sweat! Hey, damned slave, go on and live!” In this context, those gales decide also the tonality of the poetic voice and it is difficult to say, whether Mayakovski (one of the author’s literary idols) would have sounded as original, if he hadn’t echoed the originality of the revolution. Would his high-pitched tone (like the loudspeaker enhanced voice of a sailor roaring from one vessel to another) have been received with the same assurance if the winds of time did not blow the right way? If the need for pathos and the degree of that pause had not ripened in the listener’s ear after which, all is to start again…from zero?
In the “I am a snow leopard” poem, Majia adopts the speckled body of the snow leopard as his alter ego, becoming from birth the panther appearing in the crosshairs of the hunter’s rifle that, in turn, stalks its prey among the herd of goats. This is the cosmic dance set up between hunter and prey through a mysterious magnetism within the whirling circle of eternal transmutations of deaths and lives. It is the poet’s wish, positioned between the parallel states of consciousness of animal and man, that the crime of killing leaves traces not only in man’s, but also in animal’s conscience. So that the snow leopard also, from time to time, / may hit the drum of destiny, for the sake of atonement /.
It is only in the case of such continuity of the author’s metaphysical, moral and professional concerns, that the reader is enabled to stroke that “democratic thing” pulsating in the depths of the writer, which wishes to die with all dying things – whether a gazelle, tree or snow leopard, of whom, the poet — having assumed the identity – promises:
I cannot fashion songs with your words,
Yet, with my toes, I can depict on the snow-white cover a testament to my generations, leaving them as my last words.
Adopting the more acceptable version of form and the conversationalism of free-verse, the poet, even in an abundance of words, remains able to receive an epigramic or aphorismic density of meaning, securing the feeling of galactic distance as a necessary factor for the line’s lyricism. This is poetry of empathy, where metaphor is utilized not for effect, but to underline the similarity of human experience, to save man from the notion of the inordinate size and uniqueness of his own suffering. It is not one time that the reading is interrupted by remembrance of Akhmatova’s lines:
You and I are summits of suffering.
You and I are never to meet in this world…
…words that echo under the reader’s sternum; but don’t let that bother you, stretch and try to touch me, nevertheless – through stars and skies.
Otherwise, the poet never avoids death or pain: “Let, at last, the crown of thorns squeeze my head / Pain! I need you / And this is my personal choice.” “To live as a man and to abandon man as a poet” – this is Majia’s chosen way to exist, in the meantime, he will continue to“move like the wind”, “opening doors…even if only half way.” The Majian lyrics of broken objects does not exclude the possibility of being broken and beautiful, or hurting and whole at the same time, while his poetic hand of having everything restored once more prefers to fill in the crack – not with invisible glue, but a dense mixture of gold dust, which makes the fracture line more visible – like the Japanese master mending the broken teacup.
Generally, it is possible to title all poems, “A Song About Me”, the consecutive voyage of the epic hero, “so that he may once more recognize times long gone” in order to become who he always was. The quest to recognize himself, and through his own likeness, to find God as his long-lost twin. There is no reverence to any concrete religious dogma or ideology – the altar is man, the theme, and the climax of existence. The author’s intent is to reestablish the broken contract between man and nature and to liberate us from the self-enclosure of our egos, enabling us to inhabit the larger world with openness and immediacy. Majia finds miracles in the ordinary and turns them into language – not as a believer, but from a position of an observer and a witness, with a steady Proustian eye.
Having already shared his journey with others and now passing through his personal road in the transformational guise of a snow-leopard, the poet climbs through the dazzling whiteness of snow to the loftiest summit,
“cleansing himself in that unpolluted sublimity, / amid fertility- offering rays of light,” the voice reaches the reader with the certainty of a mountain prayer. This is snow of a kind notable not by its whiteness, softness, pureness or frigidity, but by the amount of light it contains and therefore, the warmth that will eventually melt the snow until the next season. The snow, as the Karma of all dying things, and therefore, the Karma of all things to be born again. Majia defines the light as “the reflection of all things radiant.” With that mirage-conjuring glow,in which are not only, “the brightened colors of a rose floating in mid-air,” butin which the poet also sees “time in its liquid state.” Emphasizing language as the medium of thought, Majia moves closer to a four-dimensional perception of the universe as a living and ongoing process that allows the surroundings to become the substance of the mind and, “like a river of delusions/scatter laughter and tears/over the shores of nothingness.”
Like an epic hero, with Borgesian enthusiasm, Majia assures that only poetry can turn darkness into light, and he continues to seek words that, “like a priest’s dream / can revive the dead / and snatch a certain echo / from all, all living souls.” Just as a feather, that submits neither to the rules of life nor death, and as stoic as a snail, the poet moves deliberately, extracting lines through his footsteps with the elegant precision of a calligraphist – shimmering and visible, leaving on the snow his promised trace…
That perhaps is more beautiful
Than the black plum tree in full bloom…
Sona Van
2019 January
Los Angeles
Source：International Liaison Department of China Writers Association
Poetry:
I AM THE ETERNAL SPIDER
I am the eternal
eight-legged spider
my web stretches between the window
and television screen
ad infinitum
between the hollow time
of real and virtual deaths
I can see everything from my center—
a bud appeared on a branch
a pop singer sang a familiar song
on TV
a woman gave birth to a son again
a soldier exploded
before the bud could fully open
you first see the light
then you hear the sound
(the laws of nature never change
unlike the laws of conscience)
the light
the sound
the dust
the shoes
a mother screams and falls down
the soil is an underground museum
here is a soldier four centuries after death
and here—only four hours after
everything repeats identically . . . which means
something must be wrong
I am the eternal mourner
in my four black veils
my grandfather was killed by a Turk
my father was killed by a German
my son was killed by an Azeri
and yesterday my daughter gave birth to a son
all killed
all killed
all killed
history repeats itself identically
it’s time to elect a new Barabbas
I am the four-part choir
of an eternal jeremiad
I am the velvety mezzo-soprano of a virgin
I am the lyrical tenor of a new bride
I am the restrained baritone of a widow
I am the gruff bass of my grandmother, eyes dim with cataracts
I am the eternal eight-thighed nothingness
my grandmother knelt and gave birth to a son
my mother knelt and gave birth to a son
I knelt and gave birth to a son
my daughter knelt and gave birth to a son
our sons crawl
stand up
and fall dead
the oceans need the drowned
I am the eternal dancer
of time
the same cabaret quartet
the same eight-thighed chain of muscles
and the same dance of death
beneath the flashing lights of guns
my grandmother bends her left knee and looks right
my mother bends her left knee and looks right
I bend my left knee and look right
my daughter bends her left knee and looks right
(how I hate these plagiarized knees)
I am the goddess of war
in a metal-hued
blood-red
camouflage skirt
with bombs instead of breasts
time touches my nipples
and falls down
I will always be around . . . that’s not the question
I just need four moods of sadness
and it’s summer here all year round
THE SPRING
The spring –
anointed spy
in camouflage,
concealed
like a tyrant,
expands its borders
slowly
day by day
and
suddenly
a blood-scented flower
blooms at night—
The war –
a metallic chessboard
the boys collide and fall down
with a clanging thud
the border
is on the asphalt
while under the ground
the bones of enemy soldiers
embrace
It’s spring . . . the scent of muscles
the eternal revelries of rats
that have been around since the world’s beginning
in the meantime, the hordes of boys will move
slightly more to the north
like the bison and . . . disappear
time is afraid of nothing but rodents
THE WAR ON MY TELEVISION SCREEN
I push a button on the remote control
and I am served the war
along with my coffee
in bed
the shooting is soon interrupted
with an advertisement for a new
kind of lipstick
and then again
a gas mask is swinging from a nail
like an elephant’s trunk
it’s springtime . . . and yet
the blood-red like an aggressor
is gradually taking over my screen
that’s a fallen soldier
that’s not an unripe fruit
underneath the tree
spoiled from hale—
look at those leaves
sweating on the branches
as if they’ve fought all night long
it’s midnight . . . the TV turns off
stopping the metallic scream
of the soldier’s mother
I will myself to believe
that I was watching
a movie
and
that now in the backstage
the solder is changing
in front of a mirror
collecting my hair to the side
I caress with my cheek the silk
of my new pillow
it’s springtime . . .
the Earth’s season of violets
is there not a single word
a sigh or a sound
that would put an end
to war at once
like a word before an orgasm
that suddenly ends
the act of love?
it’s still kindergarten
on my screen
the time after lunch
soldiers with childlike faces
lying next to each other in rows
under white sheets
as pure and hermetic
as snow
MY UNCLE A DISABLED WAR VETERAN
. . . He would spin his walking stick
demonstratively in the air
three times
every six steps
(he had turned his loss into a ceremony
not to lose the charm of his gait
of a triumphant colonel)
“In the northeast . . . below the river”
—he could show the exact coordinates
of his left leg on the map
THE SOLDIER WAS MOTIONLESS AND NOT BREATHING
The soldier was motionless and not breathing
when the golden-haired doctor
came in
there was a promise of resurrection
in her eyes
like in the gaze
of a war goddess
I would’ve liked to be
in medieval Venice
when it was fashionable
to wear masks without occasion
and walk from St. Peter’s Basilica
to St. Mark’s Square
barefooted
and
burn the effigy
of war
(I have been traveling like a pirate for a while
with a black eye-patch across my face
half the number of the dead is enough
to turn me mad—
my heart would burst if it doubled)
God
how many more will have to explode
on this street
for us to call it the “end of the world”?
(why is this number not in the Bible?)
my head will erupt
if I don’t squeeze my temples with my palms
my brain will burst in a fountain—
for in my dream
Kafka is pacing in a small room
and moaning as always,
angry Baudelaire is ripping
the thousand-colored flowers of evil
with his back turned,
Charents
is urinating on the carved door of heaven
it’s morning . . . I wake up in my bed
to see a new explosion on the screen
are the soldier and the doctor
making love
or are they lying dead
embraced in each other’s arms?
A SERIOUS DREAM
Women—
if you don’t want war
don’t look at the soldier
with admiration
and you’ll see how he’ll put
his shiny arms
down
without delay
as if a child asking for attention
I close my eyes and the boys
are fighting with water guns
and when the golden field sways
over the cracked sands of the desert
it’s the sabre dance next
and the boys are fighting
against locusts
or they’re driving them out one by one
with giant
multicolored fans
there is my hero—
Mushegh
with the most locusts in his bag
my heart is yours
from now on
hold me tight
let’s make love till dawn
in the fields of wheat
that you just saved
p.s.
I have a thousand scenarios like this for war’s death
THE ONLY GOOD NEWS IS . . . SOCHI
Sixty-six people
died in Ukraine
thirty in Syria
a policeman is dragging
a soldier’s body
Aleppo is burning in flames
the only bloodless news
is from Sochi
the Olympic ice of the battlefield
where couples dance
for gold
they turn in the air
three times
and win
they always win
while everyone loses
at war
henceforth they are my heroes—
the half-naked girl in the skates
and the boy
who flawlessly catches the girl’s body
in midair
and carries her on his strong shoulder
as a gift
elegantly gliding
amid applause
though before
my hero was Cleopatra
with her Roman sandals
black hair
straight bangs covering her forehead
I can’t say I haven’t dreamed
of lounging on a gilt-edged chair
carried on the shoulders
of my four surreptitious lovers
like a demigod
and to have armies and thousands of elephants
clashing against each other
while I sleep with the victor each night
but that was yesterday —
today my newest military dream
is the shiny smooth ice-rink
my newest king is the chess king
let them fight from now on
with their funny crowns
and let only wooden soldiers die
falling bloodlessly onto their sides
another man died from a bomb in Gaza
taking with him ten others
Aleppo is still in flames
a firefighter is dragging a soldier’s body
the only bloodless news
is from Sochi
a place of escape and beauty
what I am most afraid of
is beauty losing meaning …
the referee blows his whistle
and they move—
the three Olympic
gods
my new hero—the half-naked girl in skates
is in the middle
LIKE AN ARALEZ[1]
I am on this side of the Arax
again
with my grandmother’s doll
that survived miraculously
hidden under her
blouse
with a terrified gaze
unspeaking
for me, the border
is a river—
my gaze drowns
before reaching the shore
and
I am left with nothing but language
to lick the receding shore
like a wound
. . . and the land tells me everything
we are still on this side of the Arax
me and my survivor doll
who like my mother is a virtuoso
in talking without words
NUCLEAR DISASTER IN JAPAN
One year later
the radioactive man
returns
to his destroyed city
of radioactive ghosts
where the only thing that’s working
is the traffic light—
indifferent to the catastrophe
it continues to change colors
signaling “go” and “stop”
though there’s no one
in this city
besides the cow
that gave birth to a calf (larger than normal)
and now pushes him away
from her udder (larger than normal)
and I wonder if radiation
heightens the maternal instinct
in cows—
is the mother trying to keep her babe away
from the lethal milk—
or is it the opposite?—
the radiation
has totally killed
maternal instinct
after one year
to understand this
I read the gaze
of the only man
who walks among the ruins
quiet and reserved—as God himself
and the city beneath his feet
is like
a Noah’s ark
filled with rotting beasts
in twos
and I think
of the man-made end
of the Earth
man
and
instinct
these are questions that keep me up all night
A LONG CONVERSATION WITH MY CAT PABLO
The Greeks built citadels
Moses climbed Mount Sinai
the apostles preached
the martyrs suffered greatly
Narekatsi spoke with the Creator
Bach expanded the universe
Komitas raised the plow to the heavens
and yet another hungry child goes to sleep today
yet another cherry garden is bombed again
yet another woman goes to bed loveless . . .
it turns out . . . all of that was not enough . . . Pablo
(we still have a lot to do both you and I)
but I have slipped out of time
I have gone mad
I only respond to the ghost
and the gentle voices coming from the past
do you remember my story
about the paradise (vacation)
on the sea
the color of Mary’s dress?
everything was a lie there
Pablo
except for the captain’s curse
teach me
how to stretch so gracefully
through the loveless days of nine lives
and yawn
without regrets
the cloud has turned a strange red
—do you hear?
they’re calling you . . . from heaven
have you loved your neighbor
as yourself
Pablo?
have you turned the other cheek?
take me in your mouth—
and secretly raise me, too
you are my only hope
how good it is under your tongue
Pablo
I wish I could stay
right here
Literary Criticism:
I Am Searching For Words
…Ocean of time,
can you tell me
where the shadows of the dead lie now?
For the answer, the poet begins a search for words. This is not simply an ambition, but rather a distinct symptom of the “poet’s” calling – juxtaposing the Falknerian madman who stands outside of time with another who feels every minute of the corrosive influence of that same time-flow merge. He who is given the creative passion from above to construct “anti-time”, and upon whose “forehead the sun has etched a command / get up and kill death!” The poet lasts between this command and the consciousness of this mission, a place, /where the accounting of time runs backwards,/ where everything is as strong / as in their beginning/ andrevealing the language, as a “cypher binding all breathing things together, as a formula empowered to define the theory of everything. Poetry, as universal Esperanto. This passion is related with the common state of being – that moment of inspiration and revelation, when…
…And at that time, voices are heard from far above,
Words are dancing at the tip of my tongue –in new forms,
Before the gates of the infinite opening before me.
And my speech starts with a prayer…
With a prayer addressed not to God, but to language. The urgency of the line results from this kind of adoring infatuation with language. A distinct desire to be left alone at home with a word, and from the almost erotic passion of performing some kind of interaction with it. Also, as a result of the tension resulting from the realization of the universality of language; it’s openness and inclusiveness – its impersonality (like God’s) and its accessibility to all (like a prostitute). This nature of language makes it out to be as indifferent and unbiased towards man as nature, and also renders it incapable of intimacy, compassion and personability. This drives the poet crazy, compelling him to domesticate language by grounding it in compassion and personal love, thereby reining in the prostitute. To put it bluntly, turning God into man. The poet’s well-known temptation to dismantle and reassemble language mostly comes from this, along with his obsession to mine for new words.
I want to find the buried words
They are amniotic fluid and fish,
that sparkle in the dark
Thus, discovering the ‘word’ not as a symbol, but rather as a ‘way’ – Tao. As the staff of the whole world/without which/the spine of the universe starts cracking. This seemingly impossible task not only appears to be plausible to the poet, but also bears a measure of erotic promise. To the poet endowed with absolute sensitivity and sensuality who can “look into autumn’s eyes and see its soul/ slightly intoxicated…”, who can’t forget,”that girl’s face, bronzed like earth…” , whose ear can differentiate every sound and tell precisely, that “it is the swishing of a girlish dress/ and not a bull nibbling on some grass,” who would enter the monochrome blue of the night just to be alone with the ‘word’. And who would stay throughout the night to continue digging for that exact ‘word’.
In that sense, nothing discourages me as much as the notion that I am dealing with a translation and not the poet’s choice of words; and whether to what extent is the translator’s choice integrated with the author’s greater artistic stance. How accurately it expresses the author’s logic of preferences, style and particularly – their tonality which determines the final effect of the poem. This is especially true with Chinese, wherein words themselves are images with a direct pictographic relationship to ‘things’, therefore able to return us to our lost experience of ‘dwelling on something’, to thought and expression at the level of primitive immediacy. In this sense, each translation endangers the power of “poetic effect”. However, in this case, in this era of inflated mind and deflated spirit, Majia’s magnifying glass keeps its focus on man as he is alienated from God and tradition, with primitive excitements, cheap laughter, and guided strictly by instincts to fulfill a destiny of toppling the planet into a ravine, like in Bosch’s “Ship Full of Fools”. The reality of the absurd that either causes man to become cynical, or spiritual. Majia’s focus is to reverse the evolutionary wheel of the soul back; to return man to his humanity in order to ensure the continuity of the human experience and morality through language. In the era of globalization (i.e. westernization) Majia implies poetry as a response to Ch’an awakening of the empty mind, in which perception becomes a mirror without distinction between the inner and outer, the real and unreal, the subject and object – allowing the surroundings to become the ‘mind’s content’ – the most avant-garde way of integrating consciousness and Cosmos. Reexperiencing consciousness as an integral part of the Cosmos, the wild. Eco-poetry with clear philosophical ambitions. This kind of poetry appears to satisfy the reader’s nostalgia towards the notable line in present consumerist literature, where the contemporary writer’s propensity is to keep a safe distance from moral and existential questions. The contemporary writer hurries to integrate with the global literary market, bypassing Chinese literary traditions and adopting the experimental road of poetry. Without concrete formal or stylistic physiognomy – the writer inevitably gets mired between absurdity, nihilism and psychotherapy. As representative of Chinese renaissance literature (“Literature of Mists”, “New Wave, “Third Generation Literature”), and having adopted the dialogue style of free-verse, Majia circumvents the tradition of disdain and the tendency of radical simplification, thus, filling the crack between literary fathers and sons. Otherwise, it is not necessary to “play literature”, or try to appear contemporary. That is something from which, as Dali says, it is not possible to escape. Literally, Majia opposes the “art for art’s sake” approach, particularly today, when man’s soul and body are caught in the biological nightmare of being torn apart.“When the time is a cocktail of blood and tears / taste of hopelessness in the mouth”, when “woman and child have dreamt of reaching the sea / to find the last salvation in water / preferring to drown / rather than find themselves slaves to barbarians” (this reminds me of mothers and daughters running towards the raging river in 1915, fleeing from Turkish yataghans). Confronting such a reality, the poet makes a moral decision and without fear of platitude, states: “We are men, it is our duty to shift to our shoulders a fraction of the calamity weighing on the land of Palmyra”, while lyricism may safeguard a bit later, comparing bullet-ridden walls of passages to “…asterisks / scattering gleams in peaceful skies…” Majia refuses the contemporary tendency to ignore the beauty, tradition and elegance as if the bloody hand of warfare failed at doing just that. These lines are born not so much from mindless mental meanderings, as from the consciousness of being man. The most important dimension of Majia’s thought is the idea that all things are equally valuable and deserving of attention. This approach opens the poem to anything and it does the same for immediate experience. In this respect, this poetry can be described as both eco-poetic and as a modern extension of classical Chinese poetry. The line is empowered not so much by the desire to sing, as to the need to cry. / And now, I am examining the depths of darkness, / until tears flow from my eyes. / The poet does not stop searching for that explosive word, that with Lorcaesque duende can shake up the man who has flung a glove at nature’s face, waking him up from his lethal slumber. And who knows, why the poet writes? Perhaps because in his throat, “The Chinese and the Yi language are all kind of mixed up.” Or, perhaps because, “When he wraps his skin, it strips up bronze waves.” Or, “Because the loss of an ordinary woman does not tremble the earth.” Or, “Because people became the source of all evil.” Or, simply because, “He can’t shoot.” As a matter of fact, there is no need to remain silent because, “During silence, the will of time does not stop.”
Word-traps, labyrinths, word games, or willful complication are outside of Majia’s poetic toolbox. “… I write poetry, since I wish it to keep the finer hues of my people’s feelings and, at the same time, keep them accessible to everyone”, confesses the author. As straightforward as that. Overall, this is another song of myself, empowered by the proud and painful memories of the past, stories by Yi hunters tribe, legends, “Book of Songs” and driven by oral rhythms of the body and breath – the point of origin of all dramas. With a Whitman-ian approach to poetry – with its philanthropic and egalitarian perception of man – Majia transports words to the plains of the absolute, where they are enabled to do God-pleasing work – TO SAVE. Independent of the chosen tonality (lyrical, rhetorical, journalistic, philosophical, promotional, confessional, etc.), Majia’s line becomes recognizable thanks to that deep pulsation with which he penetrates the depths of the metaphysics of existence. With wide-open consciousness to landscape and Cosmos, Majia’s poetic voice adopts the language of ‘things’. Emphasizing the flow of the language as the machine that reproduces itself, therefore, as having a female nature of the amniotic fluid, Majia creates eco-poetry, not in the sense of reverence to the beauty of the landscape, but in the more radical sense of poetry that interweaves human consciousness with the wild. Assuming the identity of a snow leopard allows the poet to re-wild his pen and push the language into wild forms, natural rhythms, tonalities and dictions including that of someone shouting commands from one mountain peak to another. In any given time, the poet is responding to ‘sounds and furies’ of his era, to the winds that, as Baudelaire states, “…drives the poet with its double-hooked staff like a steer, yelling, ‘hey, you cursed beast! Show some sweat! Hey, damned slave, go on and live!” In this context, those gales decide also the tonality of the poetic voice and it is difficult to say, whether Mayakovski (one of the author’s literary idols) would have sounded as original, if he hadn’t echoed the originality of the revolution. Would his high-pitched tone (like the loudspeaker enhanced voice of a sailor roaring from one vessel to another) have been received with the same assurance if the winds of time did not blow the right way? If the need for pathos and the degree of that pause had not ripened in the listener’s ear after which, all is to start again…from zero?
In the “I am a snow leopard” poem, Majia adopts the speckled body of the snow leopard as his alter ego, becoming from birth the panther appearing in the crosshairs of the hunter’s rifle that, in turn, stalks its prey among the herd of goats. This is the cosmic dance set up between hunter and prey through a mysterious magnetism within the whirling circle of eternal transmutations of deaths and lives. It is the poet’s wish, positioned between the parallel states of consciousness of animal and man, that the crime of killing leaves traces not only in man’s, but also in animal’s conscience. So that the snow leopard also, from time to time, / may hit the drum of destiny, for the sake of atonement /.
It is only in the case of such continuity of the author’s metaphysical, moral and professional concerns, that the reader is enabled to stroke that “democratic thing” pulsating in the depths of the writer, which wishes to die with all dying things – whether a gazelle, tree or snow leopard, of whom, the poet — having assumed the identity – promises:
I cannot fashion songs with your words,
Yet, with my toes, I can depict on the snow-white cover a testament to my generations, leaving them as my last words.
Adopting the more acceptable version of form and the conversationalism of free-verse, the poet, even in an abundance of words, remains able to receive an epigramic or aphorismic density of meaning, securing the feeling of galactic distance as a necessary factor for the line’s lyricism. This is poetry of empathy, where metaphor is utilized not for effect, but to underline the similarity of human experience, to save man from the notion of the inordinate size and uniqueness of his own suffering. It is not one time that the reading is interrupted by remembrance of Akhmatova’s lines:
You and I are summits of suffering.
You and I are never to meet in this world…
…words that echo under the reader’s sternum; but don’t let that bother you, stretch and try to touch me, nevertheless – through stars and skies.
Otherwise, the poet never avoids death or pain: “Let, at last, the crown of thorns squeeze my head / Pain! I need you / And this is my personal choice.” “To live as a man and to abandon man as a poet” – this is Majia’s chosen way to exist, in the meantime, he will continue to“move like the wind”, “opening doors…even if only half way.” The Majian lyrics of broken objects does not exclude the possibility of being broken and beautiful, or hurting and whole at the same time, while his poetic hand of having everything restored once more prefers to fill in the crack – not with invisible glue, but a dense mixture of gold dust, which makes the fracture line more visible – like the Japanese master mending the broken teacup.
Generally, it is possible to title all poems, “A Song About Me”, the consecutive voyage of the epic hero, “so that he may once more recognize times long gone” in order to become who he always was. The quest to recognize himself, and through his own likeness, to find God as his long-lost twin. There is no reverence to any concrete religious dogma or ideology – the altar is man, the theme, and the climax of existence. The author’s intent is to reestablish the broken contract between man and nature and to liberate us from the self-enclosure of our egos, enabling us to inhabit the larger world with openness and immediacy. Majia finds miracles in the ordinary and turns them into language – not as a believer, but from a position of an observer and a witness, with a steady Proustian eye.
Having already shared his journey with others and now passing through his personal road in the transformational guise of a snow-leopard, the poet climbs through the dazzling whiteness of snow to the loftiest summit,
“cleansing himself in that unpolluted sublimity, / amid fertility- offering rays of light,” the voice reaches the reader with the certainty of a mountain prayer. This is snow of a kind notable not by its whiteness, softness, pureness or frigidity, but by the amount of light it contains and therefore, the warmth that will eventually melt the snow until the next season. The snow, as the Karma of all dying things, and therefore, the Karma of all things to be born again. Majia defines the light as “the reflection of all things radiant.” With that mirage-conjuring glow,in which are not only, “the brightened colors of a rose floating in mid-air,” butin which the poet also sees “time in its liquid state.” Emphasizing language as the medium of thought, Majia moves closer to a four-dimensional perception of the universe as a living and ongoing process that allows the surroundings to become the substance of the mind and, “like a river of delusions/scatter laughter and tears/over the shores of nothingness.”
Like an epic hero, with Borgesian enthusiasm, Majia assures that only poetry can turn darkness into light, and he continues to seek words that, “like a priest’s dream / can revive the dead / and snatch a certain echo / from all, all living souls.” Just as a feather, that submits neither to the rules of life nor death, and as stoic as a snail, the poet moves deliberately, extracting lines through his footsteps with the elegant precision of a calligraphist – shimmering and visible, leaving on the snow his promised trace…
That perhaps is more beautiful
Than the black plum tree in full bloom…
Sona Van
2019 January
Los Angeles
Source：International Liaison Department of China Writers Association