Horse with Black-White Stripes
We confine animals — of the same species or not
You strive to play musicof thunder and the wind
But notes couldn’t be heard
with black-and-white keys
The tail of conductor’s baton
couldn’t control the speed
The enemy you once feared
is now confined across
plodding back and forth, for all day long.
The children, having your pictures
as collections in their albums
They get back to their sweet cage
playing Beethoven’s.
— translation of Hong Hong (鴻鴻)’s work in publication Off the Roll Poetry (衛生紙詩刊)
This is an excellent piece about confinement. Made me think a lot about the zoo and our education. Or even, to view it from a larger context, about how human are confining each other in this society. Hope you like the piece and my translation too.
I worked on the translation last year when I was working with creative writing poetry translation workshop in NTU; the workshop was led by Pangolin House editors George O’Connell and Diana Shi. We worked on translation of Taiwan poets, and would make an anthology afterwards.
This piece was not further discussed and rendered by the workshop at the time, so I refined and published it here under my own name.
For works that are collectively discussed, rendered and published, you’re welcome to have a look at the journal Pangolin House. More works will be published soon, so stay tuned!
斑馬
我們把更多與我們同類和異類的動物，關進動物園。
空有黑白相間的琴鍵
彈不出半個音符
不停指揮的尾巴
揮不動已遠去的風聲，雷聲
從前最恐懼的天敵
現在關在對面
成日自兜自轉
而那些愛你的孩子們
則把你收集在相簿中
然後爬回自己的囚籠
繼續練習田園
以及月光
— 選自鴻鴻《衛生紙詩刊》
我在國立台灣大學的《創意翻譯工作坊：臺灣當代詩歌之英譯》課程中開始翻譯詩的旅程。我的老師喬直（George O’Connell ）和史春波（Diana Shi）同時也有自己的journal Pangoline House，若有興趣看老師們或是工作坊中的其他作品，歡迎參觀。
這篇作品因為後續沒有在課堂選入討論，在徵得老師同意之後，我自行編輯潤稿，並發佈到個人部落格上。
