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For Lisha
Contents
Title Page
Note to Reader
Dedication
A SOLITARY TRAVELER
You Must Not Run in Place
The Long-Distance Traveler
The Detached
Difficulties
Talent
Misfortune
The Choice of Exile
A 58-Year-Old Painter Leaving for America
In Saskatchewan
The Roads I Traveled
Missing Home
Cemetery
MISSED TIME
Missed Time
Fire
Lullaby
Again, Speaking of Those I Once Loved
A Visitor
The One Following You
Surprise
An Ideal Life
Two Images
April
HOME ON THE ROAD
A Snowstorm
A New Hope
In the Springtime
Toads
A Tug of War
Copying Characters
A Small Boat
Choice of Hometown
Whether You Like It or Not
The Lost Moon
ECHOES FROM FAR AWAY
The Cage
All You Have Is a Country
The Older Generation
The Last Wish
A Cabinet
Concreteness and Clarity
Incompatible
Hands
A Censor’s Talk
Do Not Start
If Eating Is a Culture
Weasels
O Wind
My China Dream
A QUIET CENTER
Doors
Acceptance
Alone
A Center
Misunderstanding
At Least
Prayer
Old
Paper
About the Author
Also by Ha Jin
Acknowledgments
Copyright
Special thanks
A Solitary Traveler
YOU MUST NOT RUN IN PLACE
Don’t say since life is short and precarious,
you want to live effortlessly.
Don’t brag you will try to outsmart time —
every day you’ll watch movies and eat dim sum
while chatting idly with friends.
Better keep busy like the others
who work for a sack of rice or a set of clothes.
See how steady those footsteps are on the wharf,
look at the ships leaving the port —
heavy, they are still going far.
THE LONG-DISTANCE TRAVELER
Keep going: the farther you go,
the smaller you grow
in the eyes of those
no longer see you. Then
they will declare that you
have disappeared, that
your foolish choice will reduce you
to a lonely ghost in the wilderness.
Keep going, don’t turn to look back.
Always carry enough food and water
and follow no one’s map
but your own. May you have
fresh excitement every day, but don’t
linger at any charming site for long. If you are
blazing a path, do not expect to meet
a fellow traveler. If by chance
you go astray, you will still
have the sun and stars.
THE DETACHED
Still I praise those who are detached
from any land, who, since birth,
have been determined to travel far in search
of home. They get their bearings
by stars, their roots growing at the end
of the imagined sky.
For them, life is a tortuous journey
and every stop a new departure. They
know they will disappear on the road,
but as long as they are living,
death keeps them company
to the destination they have envisioned,
though they have no idea
whose maps their footprints might update.
DIFFICULTIES
Don’t mention your loss again.
Indeed, you’ve lost so many things:
home, jobs, family, a country.
You landed in such a place
where everything is strange,
where you must start all over.
Sometimes you are like a child
who has just begun to talk,
sometimes you are like an old woman,
confused, unable to collect yourself.
These years you have lived
from loss to loss to loss,
surrounded by difficulties.
But whose life, if meaningful,
is not rooted in a predicament
and made of difficulties?
Stop talking about suffering.
Sufferings are never equal —
compared to billions of people,
you ought to feel fortunate
that you can start again.
TALENT
How many people wish you were mediocre
so as to prove you are the same as they?
Now that you want to stand out,
you will have to endure pain and injury —
surely there will be fists that all at once
hit you from different directions.
But even if a whole gang attacks you
you mustn’t fight back, because
they mean to sidetrack you
and watch you rolling in mud.
Keep in mind your talent also includes
patience and endurance.
Get up, move quietly, and leave
all the clamor behind.
MISFORTUNE
Misfortune is again descending.
In what fashion will it appear this time?
You have seen calamities and deaths
and have been shaken by shattered families,
their members scattered everywhere.
So many times you almost collapsed,
moaning, “No more — I’m done for!”
But you picked yourself up
and set out again, although
you had to make abrupt turns,
had to cross new hills and valleys
learning another kind of staggering.
Now, misfortune is coming,
but you don’t tremble anymore,
already familiar with its company:
beneath a ghastly mask are the faces
of various deities, including Opportunity.
THE CHOICE OF EXILE
Although you are almost middle-aged
you still want to uproot yourself
and go far away so you can start over.
You haven’t set out yet, uncertain
where to put down roots.
You often wish you could be like that artist
he could live freely on his own land.
He raised vegetables and chickens, did carpentry,
planted bamboo and fruit trees
all over the slope beyond his cottage.
Every season was like spring on his island,
where he could hear only the tides and birdsong.
It was beautiful and quiet enough to smother him.
Don’t forget he chose to kill himself
and even strangled his wife,
because he couldn’t see how to continue,
so crushed was he by madness and fear.
From the very beginning he should have known
that if he chose exile he would have no land of his own
— the desire to depart
would rise in him again and again —
he could find no home other than the road.
Don’t dream of taking root somewhere else.
Once you start out, you must live like a boat,
accepting a wandering fate
drifting from port to port, to port . . .
A 58-YEAR-OLD PAINTER LEAVING FOR AMERICA
Tomorrow you will leave Shanghai,
the city you used to love,
to look for another life far away.
“Probably another death,”
you often joke with a smile these days.
You have attempted death several times.
Expel it from your mind.
No matter how hard life is there,
you must continue to live.
As long as you are alive
there will be miracles.
Indeed, you have no English
or youth for starting over,
only your paintbrush and fortitude.
In that strange land
you must live, as always,
with stubbornness and care.
You must quit drinking and avoid
staying up all night.
Keep in mind the meaning of
your existence: wherever you land,
your footprints will become milestones.
IN SASKATCHEWAN
Facing a thousand acres for sale,
your cheeks turn pink, your eyes flashing.
True, if you pay a hundred thousand dollars,
this farm will be yours,
together with the pasture and the farmhouse.
I know you are a farmer’s granddaughter.
Your family’s land was confiscated
by the state during the land reform,
but in your veins still flows
the hunger for sowing and harvesting.
How you long to live like your friend,
the one from Henan province —
she put down roots here, raised
a family, followed daylight
to go to work and returned to rest,
busy or relaxing according to the season.
Your friend’s farm extends to the end of the sky,
already over ten thousand acres.
She has her own forest and lake.
Heavens — this makes me envious, too!
But don’t forget you are destined to wander.
Your home is on the road, and on paper.
You used to say that most property
was merely extra fat.
THE ROADS I TRAVELED
I tried to throw off all the roads I had traveled,
but by chance I brought a few with me.
Now, wherever I go, I can feel them
stretching away under my feet,
though I have no idea how they continue
to join or cross new roads.
But I am already clear about this:
all the new roads stem from
the journeys I once made.
Perhaps someday I can say with pride
that my old paths have
led me into new terrains.
MISSING HOME
Homesickness is a deep heartache, even
though you no longer know where home is.
Home is an existence of another kind —
once lost, it can’t be recovered
except in your thought and memory.
The swirling leaves can make one sad,
but you are used to the late autumn scene.
The trees will sprout green next spring.
There’s no need to feel so blue now.
Nowadays so many homes rise in your mind,
all in places you have never been.
Your dreams of the future and your longing
for the past are nothing but fantasies
of how to stop being a stranded traveler.
CEMETERY
I have seen the beauty of that cemetery,
where grassy slopes glow with sunshine
and the North Atlantic tides lap
at the pebbles and granite steps.
Tombstones spread from winding paths,
where Mexican workers trim flowers.
It’s so peaceful and sunny everywhere,
and everything is neatly organized.
I can see why both of you want to go there
and even purchased plots for your families
who have yet to leave our motherland.
Knowing where to end can help
to curb your wandering heart
and stabilize this drifting life.
In fact, a fine cemetery is a village
or town of another kind, where
people can settle afterward.
I envy your clarity about your journey’s end,
but I’m still not sure where to go,
never attached to any place.
Even after this life, I might continue to roam.
Missed Time
MISSED TIME
after Dai Wangshu
My notebook has remained blank for months
thanks to the light you shower
around me. I have no use
for my pen, which lies
languorously without grief.
Nothing is better than to live
a storyless life that needs
no writing for meaning —
when I am gone, let others say
they lost a happy man,
though no one can tell how happy I was.
FIRE
They all avoided the smoke.
Only you, from far away,
saw the fire smoldering in me.
Quietly you came over
and hugged me as if to keep warm,
saying, “Like this forever.”
Only you, only you
can bear the raging fire.
It’s burning only for you
so you can live a life of splendor,
not afraid of cold even in deep winter.
Every month will pass like a day.
LULLABY
Sleep well, sweetheart.
You were busy the whole day —
you tidied up our home, went shopping,
picked up the mail at the post office,
mended our fence, cooked,
and paid all the monthly bills.
Sleep well, sweetheart.
I’m staying beside you,
relishing the time we are together.
The flowers in our yard are blooming
and the rabbits and groundhogs
have returned to their burrows.
Sleep well, sweetheart.
Beyond the window the moon is large an
d round.
There are no furious cries
or fearsome faces here.
Tonight you must sleep peacefully
so you will wake to another good day.
AGAIN, SPEAKING OF THOSE I ONCE LOVED
They all longed to have a home,
but I could only promise to try my best
to let them live comfortably.
If they were afraid of ice and snow
we’d go south of the Yangtze.
If they didn’t like a humid climate
we would move to a plain or plateau.
But they all kept an eye on the present,
eager for an actual home:
a spacious apartment that had better
have a shower and a balcony.
Only you said everything
didn’t have to come all at once
as long as we could often be
together — especially on holidays —
at least I should be home for the Spring Festival.
You hoped that uneventful days
would follow one another without pause.