A Zheng Xiaoqiong Poem

April

Daybreak was rubbed into a drop of rusted tears

She bent down as if to hear a slight sound

April walks outside the window, lychee trees are blooming
Lilac is less than love, under the shade of iron
A rusted moon, someone who believes in love
Patiently shoulders endless grief

The past gradually fades, and memory falls into disorder
What is left inside spring’s furnace
Illuminates the cold, bare blueprint

Corrosion digests the dark’s recessed details
Exposed on the machine table by time’s passing, her humble thoughts
In April grow dark green as if seen from above, her love lying
On the exhausted factory floor. From Sichuan to Hunan
And more distant places, ideas arrive like products
A single green certification slip appears with her tears

In the illuminated factory daybreak stirs its wings
A splinter of rust wounds her heart. Outside the window
Love’s dew casts a luminous shadow over April
All of this forces her, like iron, to stiffly cling to
Her sliver of rushing love, this fragment of the rising sun

(2011)

Trans. Jonathan Stalling