An ancient spruce lives up to ten thousand years
An ant knows how
To avoid peppers, in antiquity
You wouldn’t see a tomato, yet the earth
That seems to co-exist with all these today was also
The earth for dinosaurs and flying spider-monkey ferns
The giant birds have died out from it
Only countless flickering lines of flight
Keep crossing, like a moth, a drone
Follows a mysterious train and falls
Into the valley of night, a pregnant lady
Rises to drink like a full moon, rivers to be tamed
In a nearby prison, a regular sleeps
Soundly on the upper bunk, snoring
The prelude to the Symphony of Fate

大地

古云杉能成活上万年
蚂蚁懂得如何
避开胡椒，在古代
你不会看到番茄，但这些看起来
就是现在它们共处的大地
也曾是恐龙和桫椤的大地
在它之上，巨型鸟已经绝迹
只有无数条闪着光的航线
在穿行，无人机如飞蛾
追随着一列神秘的列车遁入
峡谷的黑夜。一个孕妇
起身喝水如满月，江河将被驯服
不远处的监狱里，惯犯
已在上铺熟睡，鼾声听上去
有如《命运》的前奏

—

Ye Hui is an acclaimed Chinese metaphysical poet who lives in Nanjing. His poems in English translation have appeared or are forthcoming in 128 Lit, The Arkansas International, Asymptote, Bennington Review, Circumference, Copihue Poetry, Guernica, Lana Turner, and Zocálo Public Square. The English full-length translation of his latest collection, The Ruins, is forthcoming from Deep Vellum.

Dong LI is a multilingual author who translates from Chinese, English, French, and German. He is the English translator of The Gleaner Song by the Chinese poet Song Lin, and The Wild Great Wall by the Chinese poet Zhu Zhu. His debut collection of poetry, The Orange Tree, was the inaugural winner of the Phoenix Emerging Poet Book Prize from the University of Chicago Press.