Poetry

Frost’s Descent

by Ma Yongbo

translated by Zack Rogow & Ma Yongbo

A photograph of bird tracks etched into a thin gauze of snow on brick — Photo by Eugene_Photo / Stock.adobe.com

霜降之日

这是秋天最后一个节气
所有美好的东西都在过去
瓦上的霜印上了鸟的花纹

我还在写诗，没有在意这一生即将过完
桥上的薄霜留不下什么痕迹就已消失

深夜的火车从玄武湖那边
越过黑黝黝的紫金山顶传过来
草丛间秋虫微弱的抗议

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Frost’s Descent

On the last solar term of autumn
so many good things are disappearing
The birds have printed their footsteps on the frosted tiles

I’m still writing poetry
even though this life will end
and the frost on the bridge disappeared without leaving a trace

I hear the midnight train
approaching from the opposite shore of Lake Xuanwu
It scales Purple Mountain now in darkness
The distant train whistle is an insect softly buzzing in the grass

Translation from the Chinese

Translator’s note: The traditional Chinese calendar is punctuated by twenty-four days that are called solar terms, each with a name. The last solar term in the fall is called Frost’s Descent.

Ma Yongbo is a Chinese poet, translator, editor, and scholar of postmodern poetry. He has authored or translated more than seventy published books. Ma is a professor in the Faculty of Arts and Literature at Nanjing University of Science and Technology. His translations from English include works by John Ashbery, Emily Dickinson, Henry James, Herman Melville, May Sarton, Walt Whitman, William Carlos Williams, and many others.

Zack Rogow is the author, editor, or translator of more than twenty books and plays. His recent publications include a memoir, Hugging My Father’s Ghost (2024), and Irreverent Litanies (2019), his ninth book of poems. His most recent play, Colette Uncensored, had its first staged reading at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, and ran in London, Indonesia, Catalonia, San Francisco, and Portland.