Yang Xie translated by Ouyang Yu - 'What Did they Say When They were Talking about Miłosz'

What Did they Say When They were Talking about Miłosz

                                           Written in Chinese by Yang Xie

                                                                                                Translated into English by Ouyang Yu

That morning that year

I, with my breakfast, went to the poets

Surrounding the table, having their breakfast

As they were chatting among themselves, in a subdued voice

It gradually dawned on me after I made an attempt at piecing together

A few fragmentary words

---they were treating poems by Miłosz

As The Bible, each and every one of their faces lit

With a peculiar light and look

I further worked out the history---

Last night they must have been sleepless all night

As if engaging in a revolution or some sort of underground work

Talking about Miłosz till the day broke

I didn’t intend to show interest

In what they said when talking about Miłosz

But it so happened that I did catch the crucial point

---they kept mentioning Miłosz’s language

Even his sense of language

For many years, I have very much taken that morning

To heart---

Because I had arrived at a secret brotherhood of some sort

So presumptuously---I was bent double with laughter

At my mistake

---one evening not so long ago, I, in the translator’s presence

Laughed most uncontrollably till I shed two tears

I told him that the poets of the brotherhood

Knew no Polish and, at best, just a few English words

《他们谈论米沃什时都说些什么》

那年的那一天早晨

我端着早餐来到了几位诗人中间

他们围着桌子，一边早餐

一边窃窃私语

我渐渐听懂了，在努力拼贴出

一些零碎的语词之后

——他们把米沃什的诗篇当作了

《圣经》，每一位脸上都泛着

异样的神采与光芒

我进而还原的历史——

在昨夜，他们彻夜未眠

像干革命，或其他的地下工作

他们谈论米沃什直至东方既白

他们在谈论米沃什时都说些什么

此事原本我打算不再关心

然而不巧，我还是听到了关键之处

——他们反复说到了米沃什的语言

甚至是，米沃什的语感

多年以来，那个早晨

一直让我耿耿于怀——

因为我来到了某个秘密团伙中间

太过冒昧——对于我的过错

我几乎要笑弯了腰

——前不久的那晚，面对一位翻译家

我笑得最放肆，最终笑出了两颗眼泪

我告诉翻译家，那个团伙的诗人们

既不懂波兰语，也懂不了几个英文单词

(Yang Xie, born in the early 1970s, is a poet based in Wenling, Zhejiang, China. His poetry has been published in translation in Australia and Canada, as well as in a book of poetry along with Yi Sha and Shu Cai, by Vagabond Press in 2013)