The Howling Wind Fills Both Ears

 

By An Ran

 

The howling wind fills both ears.
You sink into your own slow, unhurried
green vault built of interlacing branches,
silently marveling at the purity of sound.
The scenery has been revised again and again.
You found this place
and thought you had found an answer.

 

The last traces of spring
drift along the field ridges
and lose themselves step by step.
On the dim water surface remain the stubble of reeds harvested last winter.
The stream, in newly dug channels,
turns at ninety-degree angles on command.
Ponds have been excavated in great numbers—
their uniform square shapes suggest
that the wetland, under the strong protection of the new reservoir,
has begun to multiply.

 

Beside the woods, the cement foundation of a house
is now nothing but a naked lump of exposed desire.
The wild reeds that draw near it
bend their bodies one by one,
drooping with elongated, withered yellow faces,
while the gramineous weeds—
with their even humbler, wordless green—
never miss
a single corner or crevice.

 

When, scrambling on all fours,
you climb the earthen dam at the end of the path,
the new world you imagined
turns out to be an even vaster, boundless accumulation.
Everyone must eat some dirt—
the English proverb from Pride and Prejudice
takes root here.

 

This enormous metaphor is not unfamiliar,
yet it feels as if separated by several generations.
In the summer flood of ’75,
the county agricultural machinery factory was ordered here to fight the flood.
A scrawny young worker and his comrades
stood in the wind and sand of the wilderness
like a patch of crooked, swaying green shoots.

 

Three years later,
within the perfection wrapped by two empty husks,
only one intact grain was harvested.
There was no time for the tragicomedy to be contemplated.
Sowing,
loss,
interwoven with scrambling on all fours.
In the jolting, bumping extension,
you draw near one destined ignorance after another.

 

When he finally speaks,
what remains are only a few sparse words—
that vague phrase “Zhen Guo Hui Hui”
(the Ming-era “State-Guarding Hui”),
which, no matter how you listen,
sounds like a sigh at the river’s mouth
that no one hears.

 

呼呼的风声灌满双耳

 

文/安然

 

呼呼的风声灌满双耳，

你沉浸在自己慢悠悠的

树桠搭建的绿穹下，

在心里感叹声音的纯净。

风景一次次被修改，

找到这里，

以为有了一种答案。

 

最后的春意

沿着田埂路

一步步迷失。

幽暗的水面残留着去冬收割过后的芦苇茬子，

溪流在新开掘的沟渠里

按九十度直角的指令拐弯，

池塘挖了不少，

那统一的四四方方的形制暗示

湿地在新水库的强力庇护下

开始繁衍。

 

林边的水泥房基

只剩一团裸漏的欲望，

亲近它的野苇，

一根根身子佝偻，

耷拉着一张张

拉长的枯黄的脸，

而禾本杂草——

以其更卑微与无言的绿，

从不放过

每一处犄角旮旯。

 

当手脚并用

攀上小路尽头的那道土坝，

心目中的新天地

却是更辽阔无边的堆积。

每个人都要吃一些土——

傲慢与偏见里的英国谚语

在此落地。

 

这巨大的隐喻并不陌生，

却像隔了若干世代。

七五年伏汛，

县农机厂奉命在此抗洪。

一个干瘦的青工与他的工友

在旷野的风沙里

像一片东倒西歪的青苗。

 

三年后，

两片空鼓的颖叶

包裹下的完美里，

只收获一颗完整的颖果。

悲喜剧来不及沉思，

播撒、

遗失，

穿插着手脚并用的攀爬。

在颠颠簸簸的延伸中

抵近一个又一个

注定的无知。

 

当他终于开口

还剩下的是为数不多的词——

那个“镇国回回”的模糊说法，

听来听去，

就像河口上

一声没人听见的叹息。