Three-Story Poetry - Images In and Out of Exile
“Dry Bones,” “A promise to Meet in this Life,” and “Sky”
By Huang Xiang
Writer/painter Huang Xiang, born in Hunan Province in 1941, is considered the paramount pro-democracy poet of China. His unceasing bravery in the face of re-imprisonment and further torture forced him to leave his homeland in 1997. He was commissioned for “Three-Story Poetry” mural by Slippery Rock University for the 2007 Kaleidoscope Arts Festival and the Village at Slippery Rock while he was a resident poet for Pittsburgh’s Cities of Asylum program. The English translations of the three poems are located on the Village at Slippery Rock website www.slipperyrockpa.org and Slippery Rock Business Assn. website www.goslipperyrock.com
<!--1. (Underground) Four brown panels on brick wall in walkway:
Dry Bones
After millions of years,
Millions of years beneath layers of earth
Maybe someone will
Dig up my
Skeleton
At that time
He might imagine
A remote geological age
A far-off history vast and indistinct
These are the decayed bones of his own ancestor
These are the fossils of an ancient biologic skeleton
At that time,
He might imagine that
This very pile of dry bones
Once made noise in the world
Loved
Hated
Mourned
Cried out
Agitated
He might imagine
That this pile of dry bones
Once had a face contorted with bitterness
Once had eyes that cursed silence
Once with bloodless lips tight closed
silently endured
Once wrote poems as eternal as the moon and stars
These are the bones of a poet
These are the bones of one while hoping, lost hope
and despaired
These are the bones that furiously fought
These are the bones of one who walked the world, struggled
and was tempered
These are the dry bones that were scattered the reassembled
bones of a man whose skeleton was scattered
These are jawbones with teeth that gnashed in hatred
These are dry bones that clanked while he resisted
These are dry bones that saw heavenly lighting strike
listened head-cocked to the growing clamor of
all the earth’s creatures
These are the dry bones of a Man
After millions of years
Millions of years in the layered earth
When a future anthropologist
Geologist
Or archeologist
Digs up my bones
Under the same burning sun will he please
Raise up these fragmented bones of water and air
Seek out the Man.
Written in China in 1968
Calligraphed at Slippery Rock University, Pennsylvania of USA in 2007
(Translated by Andrew G. Emerson)
<!--2. (Above Ground) Red, white, and black inserts on lower rear of building (small black and white square is title of poem):
A Promise to Meet in This Life
Extremely quiet
Lying face-up under the sky
The body is
An open book
Each page I turn over
Is a day
Of the known and unknown
A new Day
That touches the heart for no reason
Words written down
Bring the mist-soaked shrubs
To streaming tears
As they gather round and decipher
That which is not written down
Hither and thither
The elusive wind
Ventures a guess
A lifetime is like a promise to meet
It’s as if I had waited for this
For a thousand years
Above and below my head
Extreme emptiness
Between the crests of grasses and fingertips
Birds and clouds
Flow
Written in Pittsburgh, PA in 2005
Calligraphed at Slippery Rock University, Pennsylvania of USA in 2007
(Translated by Michelle Yeh)
<!--3. (Beyond Ground) Blue triangle on white in rear peak of building:
SKY
What colors can I use to paint you, oh sky
From far away I perceive you like an obscure body of water black
as lacquer
I don’t comprehend the meaning of your azure color
You are a wonderful artistic concept replete with many images
You hold within you a poem waxing wide between birth and death
that I have yet to realize
Written in China in 1972
Calligraphed at Slippery Rock University, Pennsylvania of USA in 2007
(Translated by Andrew G. Emerson)