Live Encounters Poetry & Writing Volume One Nov-Dec 2026.
The Pond, poems by Ma Yongbo.
Fishing at Night
Distant north, misty bay,
father, with my elder brother and I
settle between the willows by the river.
Water flows over the roots,
torch light shone on the middle of the river.
I was wearing rain boots, on the slippery bank
I felt the cold of the river and the power of the torrent
even from inside the leather boots.
Father kept me nearby
and also away from the river.
A heavy wide raincoat protected me from buzzing mosquitoes.
The Figure of my elder brother was flickering,
as he waited patiently for a small fish.
I forget what my father caught
knowing only that he got something,
he didn’t recognise it either
in the cold wind of a summer night in my hometown.
Loud, bubbling, father’s shadow tall and big
remains still, long behind the willows,
cast upon the river’s surface
by some mysterious shimmer like a broken bridge,
many great stars swim in the river,
I watched the trees behind him, attracted by the darkness,
there was always someone coming, parting the branches.
I have never caught any fish in my life
Whenever I pull the fishing rod, in the dark bottom
my father is wrestling with me, pulling downward,
a thin thread, shaking, connecting us.
The Pond
At night the pond seems covered by an iron lid,
glowing with a dark, heavy sheen.
All night long I am restless and stirred,
as if I see you climbing toward the bright Venus star
in the sky beneath the water.
In summer, some children suddenly turn mysterious.
Grown‑ups hold me back beyond the crowd，
your mother sits on the ground, hair loose, rocking back and forth,
her sobs seem swallowed by the pond’s stillness.
I am five this year, we play in the water together,
I can only trudge home burning with indignation,
staring at that swarm of people like black flies upon the dike.
As if death is a kind of glory,
lifting you above us, making you grave.
Sometime after, we move to another county,
I forget your name,
I never learn how to swim.
Yet whenever I come back from cutting grass in the wild
and chance upon a pond, I drop my bundle,
strip naked, and crawl through its water.
The bottom is slippery, rich black mud,
and bodies fill the water all at once.
Covered in muck, I scramble up the prickly grassy bank,
the pond settles back into quiet,
turning dark, deep, impenetrable.
All ponds look alike,
as if they connect to one another underground.
No one else around, only the ripening fields,
between rows of slender wheat,
small dark shadows dart quickly past.
White poplars along the wheat‑field edge sough in the wind,
turning up the pale undersides of their leaves.
In the Darkness of Old Age Years
In the darkness of old age years, yellowing eyes remain restless.
In the slow-burning anger, a thousand shifting visions stir.
Amidst those thousand visions, monotony and axis remain unchanged.
Who is the innocent horse, breaking into cold sweat,
treading over and over upon the smooth silk,
those creases, mirrors, lace, and hanging drapery—
yes, that is the word—drapery, long,
curved vines, a vortex amphitheater, layer upon layer,
empty of people, empty of things.
You will repeat those mistakes, persist in them,
clenching your teeth in the dullness of old age years,
for only those mistakes truly belong to you.
Empty of people, empty of things.
For what smolders in the darkness
it is not just the head of the innocent, but your innocence too.
Ah, to reckon with one’s transgressions in the darkness of old age years
is but a naive dullness, merely another drapery,
another vortex of wigs, spinning ever faster,
those yellowing eyes struggling to match the rhythm.
Empty of people, empty of things.
Only the spinning and spinning, listen,
within the walls without thickness,
that pecking sound, in the darkness of old age years.
If Not for You
If not for you, I would wake upon a reef,
Not knowing how I had come to sea.
I would look around at the vast expanse,
At the first elements of the universe,
Not knowing what they were, nor what I was.
If not for you, I would sit atop a solitary suitcase,
A supple wicker chest exuding ancestral fragrance.
Inside it, my unseen manuscripts—
Siberian snow scrawled on the backs of diagnoses,
Arguing in ciphers against the Latin certainties of the front.
I would wait in a wind-swept square too large to hold me,
For a black train to take me to the far side of the moon—
A train with no conductor.
If not for you, I would not be this shape,
A net cast wide, now reduced to a single knot.
I would keep changing—face, age, flag, even gender.
Tears of the innocent would sharpen scythes.
Mothers who fed their young on rust
Would give birth to more reefs,
Round-skulled, and stepping upon them,
They would smile as they walked toward me.
© Ma Yongbo
Ma Yongbo was born in 1964, Ph.D, representative of Chinese avant-garde poetry, and a leading scholar in Anglo-American poetry. He is the founder of Difficult writing and objectified poetics. He is also the first translator to introduce British and American postmodern poetry into Chinese.He has published over eighty original works and translations since 1986 including 9 poetry collections. His complete Chinese translation of Moby Dick has sold over 600,000 copies.In August 2026, he received the American poetry award: New Generation Beat Poet Laureate (2026-lifetime) China, from The National Beat Poetry Foundation (NBPF) in the United States.