— To Silvia and all the others

Sing — Muse, sing of the time
a nest of dashing translators have their dreams
dashed by the deuced dashes.
Oh, dash it!

1

Stately, slim Silvia M. comes from the stairhead,
followed by Brother T who plunges like lead
into the esoteric. Quite the wordsmith, Asst. Prof. W,
whose occasional smile can very well melt you.
First-year PhD student, the camera-wielding Y,
threatens to capture everyone at their most wry.
Kind-hearted Alice, ever true to her art,
cooks the best soup to soothe throat and heart.
C, R, and S: we have Italians to spare,
but with Dr L’s jabbering they cannot compare.
Hidden in a nook is ein guter Mensch D,
a humble student he is and shall always be.

2

Airing the sutras on a fine day,
and feeding the white horse
(not a horse, whispers Gongsun Long).
Are these what we do along the way,
or items on a ne’er-to-do to-do list?
Syntax (and common sense, dare I say)
suggest the first, while three days of philosophising
begs to give the nay.
Anxious queries gather dust
in the poet’s inbox, far far away.

3

Three shades of Chinese, harsh German,
a terzetto of post-Dantean Italian,
timid Dutch, and a cacophony
of poststructuralist English
escape through the gnashing teeth
of the window and fly
(or soar or even indeed glide)
alongside the crow-pecked milan,
before plunging into a gorgeous twilight
(mind you, not a dusk or just sunset).

4

‘The Chinese seem to know not
how to end a poem,’ they bay.
I’ve half a mind to throw in a few
more dashes, and call it a day.
But being of a generous nature,
I have only this to say:
May we gather again, my friends,
before I grow quite grey.

Dylan K. Wang
29 March 2024
At the Translation House Looren

Silvia Marijnissen wrote an excellent summary of the workshop, you can read it on her website.

And another article with translations of some of Ling Yu’s poems in various languages are published on Taiwan Lit and the Global Sinosphere.