我拉开一个个抽屉
翻阅自己经历过的岁月
抽屉里那些
曾经提心吊胆的地下诗稿
如今安静得能听见
养老的声音
抽屉里
还有一叠已成为古迹的粮票
自从它们成为古迹的那一天起
我就知道虽然它被称作了文物
但绝不为这块土地上的农作物
感到一丝骄傲
抽屉里
还有两枚红卫兵袖章
一枚已生锈的半钢手表
几张一九七六年四月五号
天安门悼念活动的现场照片
它们具有同样牺牲后的肃穆
抽屉啊中国抽屉
甚至在黑五类肉体上
拉开的抽屉里
也必会有一本红宝书
I pull out the Chinese drawers, one by one,
take a look at the years that I lived through;
in one drawer, those texts of
underground poems used to wrench themselves;
now, in the quiet, I can hear
the sounds of their retirement.
In another drawer
are a few grain coupons which are already antiques;
from the day they became obsolete,
I knew, even though they were cultural treasures,
they never had pride
for these crops from this land.
In another drawer
are two Red Guard bands,
one rusty fifty-per-cent steel watch,
and a couple of photos from the April 5, 1976
memorial in Tiananmen Square—
they all have the somber quiet after sacrifice.
The drawers, the Chinese drawers:
even pulling them out
from the bodies of the five evil breeds—
a Red Book must be in there.
Note: the five evil breeds (landlords, counterrevolutionaries, richer-than-other farmers, bad people, right wingers) were groups of people castigated during the Cultural Revolution.
Translated from the Chinese into English by Arthur Sze, previously published in Poetry International