Ant
By Liu Hanzhi
Translated by Alice W. Cheang

Here, you know perfectly well,

There’s no place to rest,

Nothing to get.

So stop being that way:

muttering under your breath to yourself

one line at every step

in your humble little counting-house way:

You may as well know

The twentieth century isn’t all that honey-sweet.

Left, right, left, right, across the desk,

Climbing literature’s high peaks,

Circumambulating the deep valleys of ancient and modern:

A nature so habituated to searching and seeking

in the end still gets tumbled together with life in a single heap.

Puny, tiny antling:

Yours is a fate sadder far than Li Qingzhao’s.

What’s different is

She lost her mate     You, your plaint.

From the smudged ink of Tang poem and Song lyric

to look back over

a road stretching a thousand years out of sight

it’s as far as anyone can make it.

And however worked up you get—

go flying headlong in pursuit—

still

you’ve missed those glory days.

In these hard times, besieged as we are on all fronts,

I know just how you feel.

Come, shoulder tightly the burden of your faith

in wind     in song.

We’ll light each other’s way with tears.

This way, meeting, we’ll hold each other close:

one sob at every step

tracing the veins of our own kind:

sob our way back, all the way back to Song

back to Tang.

劉含芝：螞蟻

明知這裏
無處可棲    無物可取
快別那様
一步一個句    竊竊私語
這經濟文明的小家氣
你當知
二十世紀並不甜美

縱橫書桌左右
爬文學高峰
繞古今深谷
尋尋覓覓的習性
終歸與生命糾纏成一體
又瘦又小的螞蟻啊
你比李清照更凄苦

不同的是
她失偶    你失恨
從唐詩宋詞的墨漬
望回來
天涯路一千多年
說多遠就有多遠
氣急的你
縱如何飛躍追趕
還是
錯濄那種輝煌

楚歌四起這個時代
你的心情我明瞭
馱緊信仰
風裏    歌裏
彼此以淚光互相照亮
那様見面便抱頭
一步一個泣
沿自身族類的脈胳
一路泣回宋
泣回唐