MA YONGBO was born in 1964, Ph.D, representative of Chinese avant-garde poetry, and a leading scholar in Anglo-American poetry. He is the founder of polyphonic writing and objectified poetics. He is also the first translator to introduce British and American postmodern poetry into Chinese, making contributions that fill gaps, the various postmodern poetry schools in Chinese are mostly guided by his poetics and translation.
He has published over eighty original works and translations since 1986, including 9 poetry collections. He focused on translating and teaching Anglo-American poetry and prose, including the work of Dickinson, Whitman, Stevens, Pound, Amy Lowell,Williams, Ashbery and Rosanna Warren. He published a complete translation of Moby Dick, which has sold over 600,000 copies. He teaches at Nanjing University of Science and Technology. The Collected Poems of Ma Yongbo (four volumes, Eastern Publishing Centre, 2024), comprising 1178 poems, celebrate 40 years of writing poetry.
MIDWAY STOP
It was an autumn long ago
I was still young then, still in love with something
There are few passengers on the huffing local train.
I’m curled up alone on a long seat,
the vibration of the wheels rocked my head,
suddenly stopped; woke me up
it is late at night and the northern plain is dark,
only the river shimmers and no one speaks,
no-one moves around, only the joint between the two carriages
sighs in frustration like an accordion
like the silence after a dispute between lovers
I stand up and listen. What’s happening?
Where are we? The darkness outside is also listening,
no signal lights are flaring,
no train suddenly burst out from the opposite side
waving ghostly white vapour.
Nothing happens. Suddenly,
in the dark, a bumblebee swoops into the car window,
leaving scratch marks and a clear buzz in the dust;
its whole head looks like a dazed
and painted eye, staring at me blankly.
Many years have passed, the purpose of that trip
I have long forgotten. The only thing that I miss
is the silent gathering of the entire wilderness during the midnight parking
and the uneasiness of the young man who never got off the car.
13 April 2018, translated by Helen Pletts & Ma Yongbo
