Poems by Yan Li – translated by Denis Mair
Translator’s note: Yan Li was in on the ground floor of art and literature movements in Beijing during the late 70s and early 80s. As a teenager, while he was an apprentice machinist, he and the poet Bei Dao hitched a ride to the rural marshlands of Baiyangdian two hours south of the capital, where their friend Duo Duo was a sent-down youth. At that early period, the three friends were already passing around notebooks full of copied poems. Yan Li was also a core member of the Stars Painting Group, which held a march in 1979 calling for artist-initiated exhibitions. In 1985, Yan Li went to New York and founded the poetry journal First Line, for which Ai Weiwei collaborated with him on illustrations. Yan Li has been pushing the envelope of free expression ever since. He is an amphibious visual artist who brings his own home-grown surrealism into the domain of the written word. – Denis Mair
Addicted to Each Other
A
If only love could be refined into a drug
To get people hooked on each other
And give them even greater contempt for hatred
I often remind myself when going out in the morning
To cancel out all dreams
That can cancel each other out
To save me from spinning circles in this world
I have been looking for the route
That goes by way of myself to reach others
Just as I’ve maintained all these years
I may take off umpteen times
But I can only land on mankind’s runway
B
Nobody can take away my freedom to fly toward you
Though I can only fly by inventing
A posture that disdains tradition
But I have set forth on the path
That goes by way of you to reach myself
So now that I’ve run into you
I won’t go off to catch rays in some darker place
I have no doubts we two are getting addicted
The Lord’s prescription may have come a few seasons late
But for us it is only the onset
Thank You
The state has occupied all geographical surfaces
I can only construct my inner world downward
The government has taken the biggest banquet table
The plate in my hands will have to serve as my table
Social institutions occupy all the skeletal joints
I can only pound out a romantic mood with percussion of flesh
Schools have occupied the vantage point of education
All my theories can do is fight guerilla actions
My wife has occupied the facial expression of family life
All I can do is polish the mirror a little brighter
My children have occupied the future
All I can do is help them tie their shoes
For this kind of arrangement
All I can say is thank you
Before the Heist
The phone rings from the pile of books and papers I was pillowing my head on
It is the ringleader, a man with impeccable cover, ignored by modern literature
He tells me
The weapons are ready
The explosive effects
And a souped-up vehicle
I try to express precise calm before we go into action
But due to the current tyranny of visual style over words
Nothing is left in people’s mouths but a jumble
Of hyped-up advertising reflexes
And since I’m no exception to the rule
I stammer into the receiver
Promptly I relay news of the rendezvous
To a few cohorts, who like me are tired
Of tongue-tied businessmen who let money do the talking
Like me they are ready
To put their lives on the line for this operation
Which we have code-named Regain Depth
When I think that before long
My mind’s expression will be rich again
My hands get that good old clammy feeling
Of writing about life
I toss back half a glass to toast my success
Feeling confident that we can pull it off
This robbery of the bank of language
As I stare intently once again
At the getaway map unfolded across
The body of mankind ∎
See here for the original Chinese
