REMEMBERING THE TRAFFIC LIGHTS OF THAT ENDLESS NIGHT: WAITING AT YELLOW, STOPPING AT RED, GOING ON GREEN
the night has never belonged to me or to you,
just like a country
that has never belonged to its people.
when everything is collapsing, all
shards, fragments, and tatters,
there are hearts still on the rise.
when a masquerade unfolds on a stage,
a play where every person speaks,
a fake pistol can kill a real emperor.
yet what rises, does not converge.
the city is in perpetual motion.
red lights do not stop you or me
to wave, smile, or nod.
welcoming friends from abroad does not require
ascribing enmity, or affection.
every path leads straight to the heart.
you always say that dark clouds are above your head, but
you ignore that.
everything grows so freely, so arbitrarily,
in the night.
the eternal sunlight comes and washes over the fields.
Author and Translator Bios
Brian Zhang Yucheng, better known by the pen name Ling Feng, is a writer and doctor from China. His short stories and poems have been published in several literature journals, including Youth Literature (青年文学), Beijing Literature (北京文学), Aves (小鸟文学), Hunan Literature (湖南文学), and West (西部). He has received the Zhu Ziqing Literary Award from Tsinghua University, the Future Science Fiction Masters Award for his short stories, and his screenplay, The Road Not Taken, was selected for the Outstanding Youth Film Drama Program of the Publicity Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China.
Jonathan Chan is a writer, editor, and translator of poems and essays. His first collection of poems, going home (Landmark, 2022), was a finalist for the Singapore Literature Prize in 2024. His translations have appeared in Asymptote; poetry.sg; China Hands; and Journal of Practice, Research and Tangential Activities (PR&TA). More of his writing can be found at jonbcy.wordpress.com.
© Ling Feng. Translation © by Jonathan Chan. All rights reserved.
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