Image credit: Mei Lam So, "Untitled", Monotype

View Artwork Credits
View full size

Taste of Salt

The sunlight dances

The sea water glitters.

They are familiar scenes in the salt fields.

Among those drops of sweat

Light and shadow move and flicker

In the eyes of salt field farmers.

 

A few turning water wheels

Churn the sea water into salt fields.

Heated by the sun, over and over

Sea water is reduced into a dense, salty liquid.

Once crystallized

Sea water becomes salt.

The salt tastes bitter

Once processed, and turns crystal white.

 

Sea water is bitter.

But add some pinches of salt

When cooking

The salt seasons foods.

Salt turns plain ingredients into gourmet dishes.

Indeed,

Salt seasons life--

Sea salt tastes bitter at first,

Yet it is an essential ingredient in life!

 

The workers in the salt fields

Labor under the scorching sun.

Over and over, they taste the bitterness of life, and its joy.

Their unseen tears

Taste of salt too.

 

 

The Moon and the Lily

I become drunk and cannot help

But vomit out my turbulent heart.

After the fire

The sky sneers with a wide, toothy grin

Shining with inky black coldness.

 

The pond is raucous the whole night long

While a hand stretches out at an angle

Thin, wrinkled is the hand

That holds me

Prevents me from plunging headfirst into the water! 

 

 

Tea Master

There is gourmet tea in the South

When you look at the character 茶 cha

There is a 人 ren between 草 cao and 木 mu

Yes, when you see tea, there’s a person holding the leaves and the wood

Accordingly, the tea has taken in the essence of the sun and the moon

 

Master of the tea house 葉東泰 Ye Tongtai

In his name, 葉 (Ye) indicates green leaves

東 (Tong) states that the sun rises from the woods

And the spring sun nurtures living things, like water

 

At the end of the year, newly brewed tea leaves are sealed in pots before the Lunar New Year

The tea matures with time

Subtle in flavour and lasting, like the culture of the ancient city Tainan

We’ll enjoy this tea at our leisure

Let’s savour this aged tea

 

The smooth fragrance of tea

The warm-hearted host

Ah! The fragrance of tea enriches life and friends

What a beautiful life with tea!

 

 

 

 

 

 

陽光閃耀著

海水,閃耀著   

一顆顆的汗珠  

鹽田的風景 

光影也恍忽了。

 

轉動的風車   

戽水導入了池中  

熱氣幾番蒸騰   

高達飽和點

結晶,苦澀的鹽 

以化學藥品提淨   

所有存留的雜質 

再經粉碎及過篩

終於瑩潔純白    

一如雪的肌膚      

烹煮時只要些微 

溶入了食物

平淡轉化甘美  

也補充了,亙古

生命所需的要素。

 

而鹽民為了生活

任烈日暴晒 

反芻人生的苦樂

隱密的淚水  

一樣有鹽的鹹味。 

 

 

月與荷花 

醉了酒,不禁

嘔吐出翻騰的心

火焚之後,天空

齜咧笑著的牙

閃熠著墨冷的寒意

 

整夜喧鬧的池塘

斜裡伸出來一隻

枯瘦的手

趕緊托住我

防我一頭栽入水裡

 

 

茶人

南方有茶

茶字拆解開

草木之間有人

吸收日月精華

 

茶人葉東泰

其葉青青

林木有太陽升上來

春陽如水

 

年底封茶過長年

靜靜等待款款起變化

府城文化甘醇底

閒情奉茶啉老茶

 

溫潤的茶

溫潤的人

溫潤的茶人生

茶香厚人情

 

 

Translator's Note

Most people who knew the author Lin Ruiming, pen name Lin Fan, had the image of a diligent historian working in his office overflowing with his precious book collection. Despite this image, Lin Fan the poet is revealed in these potent works. A humorous and kind colleague of mine at National Cheng-Kung University in Tainan, what I admired most about Lin was his insight and his passion for life. Lin suffered from kidney dysfunction for over twenty-five years. In the last ten years of his life, he was confined to a hospital for treatment every other day. It was during this period of suffering that the poet saw life, its essence, more acutely. In his poetry, he is able to embrace life, its wonder and sadness. This is largely conveyed through imagery of light and darkness, as well as through the seemingly contradictory co-existence of the past, the present and the future; that is, through many crossings of the borders of time.

“The Moon and the Lily” reveals the romantic and turbulent heart of a poet. In the first stanza, readers are taken immediately to a dramatic scene deep in the night:

“I become drunk and cannot help/But vomit out my turbulent heart.”

In the last stanza, a vivid image of a thin long hand stretching out from the pond and holding the poet is wildly beautiful. It also echoes the legend of Li Bai (李白, AD 701–762), the famous Tang Dynasty (AD 618–907) poet, who it is said once tried to pick up the moon from its reflection in a lake while he was very drunk. This image reveals Lin’s poetic heart and also links him to a long-standing literary tradition of poetry tracing back to the Tang Dynasty.

In “Tea Master”, the poet describes the flavour of tea thus:

At the end of the year, newly made tea leaves are sealed in pots before the Lunar New Year

The tea matures with time

Subtle in flavour and lasting,

just like the culture of the ancient city Tainan. 

From the fragrance of tea leaves, Lin links tea to the culture of the ancient city Tainan. One of my challenges in translating “Tea Master” was to convey the concept that “drinking tea” is more than the tea sipping itself; drinking tea is culture, a ritual in daily life for many people. It is a love affair with tea, and an appreciation of it. In addition, the choice of expressions took some consideration too. For instance, the “fragrance of tea” seems not adequate to convey “. Most significantly, the poet played with Chinese characters in the Chinese original, for example considering the characters used in the name of the Tea Master. In my translation, I only paraphrase the meanings of those characters. It seems impossible to convey the structures or shapes of strokes of those Chinese characters, and so I have included them alongside the pronunciation and the English.

Influenced by his early readings, Lin was passionate about ancient Chinese culture. While strolling in the temple yard of the Tainan Confucius Temple, the poet wondered whether the sound of the bells came from the age of Sang (1600–1046 BC) or Chou Dynasty (1046–256 BC). In the third person voice, the poet sighs over the demise of culture and classical literature: “There are poets who wrote and chanted/Some lamented over the demise of culture./What a fright/They saw blank faces among the scattered old classical texts” (extract “Confucius Temple”).

Accompanying the indefinite sense of turning to the past or history, in some cases to a Chinese Mother culture, to connect to his cultural ‘roots’, is the poet’s concurrent awareness of the need to embrace the social-political reality of his existence, his Taiwanese identity. Through his poetry, Lin transcends these two strands that are deemed incompatible by many. For instance, in his poem “Philosophy of History,” Lin reveals his understanding and obsession with the notions of time and history:

Waves of time roaring

enormous.

Gulping me

One after another. . . .

To challenge me

Heavy, very heavy.

Sailing in history

The vast unknown ocean.

I catch little

very little remains.

Even so I have to offer myself

completely.

On one hand, the poet perceives the huge task to work on history. On the other hand, he surrenders himself to his destiny and is willing to answer its call.

In the same way, during the process of translation, I have travelled back and forth between my Taiwanese and Australian existences. The conversations with Lin’s poetry bring me back to many familiar scenes in Tainan, the city famous for its temples and street food. While translating “Tea Master”, I recalled vividly how the Tea Master Ye recited Lin’s poem while holding the old tea jar. Together the Tea Master and I lamented the passing of good old days with dear friends. Luckily, Lin has left us many poems showcasing the atmosphere and pace of living in Tainan. Sometimes, while working on a translation, I will make a pot of Taiwanese/Chinese tea. Sipping tea and reading those poems, I am transported to the poet’s office where we would sometimes share tea and Mozart’s music. In “The Politics of Re-homing: Asian diaspora poetry in Canada”, the literary critic Zhang Benzi describes “the hooking and unhooking” of elements of identities to create a new sense of belonging (2004). Thus, for me, to translate these writings is to remember the roots I left behind. This translator, a Taiwanese Australian, reconciles and resettles through this journey of translating transcultural experiences.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


Shuhwa Shirley Wu

×

In the Classroom

×