Live Encounters Poetry & Writing August 2024
Echo, poems in English/Chinese by Anna Yin.
Echo
A little red oriole
returns to her nest
whenever the moon rises.
Paradise-yearning wings in her dream,
she sings only between the tides…
On a distant shore
when the sunset satins the lush mountain,
someone picks up
a tiny blue seashell,
to listen to her heavenly song in the wind…
回声
一只小红鹂
月亮升起时又要归巢
飞天的羽翼隐藏在梦里
她的歌唱只在潮汐之间
在遥远的海岸
当夕阳染红山峦
有人拾起
一个小小的蓝色海贝
去聆听风传来的她的歌吟
An Elegy to My Old Swimsuit
For decades, you have sat quietly in my drawer
I guess in the mirror
you too feel shamed on my naked body
So you fade in colour to
make an exit.
I don’t blame you
being coward myself…
Now I regret not seeing what really matters
Too late, but let me wear you again
to ask for forgiveness.
给旧泳衣的挽歌
多年来，你一直静静地躺在我的抽屉里
我猜在镜子里
我赤裸的身体也让你感到羞愧
所以你褪去颜色
毅然离场
我不怪你
自己也只是懦夫…
而今我后悔没有懂得真正重要的
为时已晚，但让我再次穿上你
请求你的原谅
What We Behold
Quietly at a corner of the airport,
I don’t count time.
Like a leaf in the crevice rocks in a stream
I let my musings wash over me.
A school of fish swim under the water…
How long can they hold their memory?
Perhaps beauty is a moment like this –
Just beholding the distant dream once
and that’s enough.
所思所得
静静地在机场一个角落
我并不去计算时间
像溪流中岩石缝隙里的叶子，
让思绪在我心中流淌。
水下有一群鱼游弋
它们的记忆有多久？
也许美好就是这样的一刻
见证过远方和梦想
这就已经足够
© Anna Yin
Anna Yin was born in China and immigrated to Canada in 1999. She was Mississauga’s Inaugural Poet Laureate (2015-17) and Ontario representative for the League of Canadian Poets (2013-16). She has authored six poetry collections and three books of translations including Mirrors and Windows (Guernica Editions 2021). Anna won the 2005 Ted Plantos Memorial Award, two MARTYs, two scholarships from USA and grants from Ontario Arts Council and Canada Council for the Arts. Her poems/translations have appeared at Queen’s Quarterly, ARC Poetry, New York Times, China Daily, CBC Radio, Literary Review of Canada, Danver Quarterly, Epoch Quarterly. She read on Parliament Hill, at Austin International Poetry Festival, Edmonton Poetry Festival and universities in China, Canada and USA etc. She teaches Poetry Alive and started her own small press: Sureway Press for translating, editing and publishing or other cultural exchange services. Her new poetry collection: Truth in Slant will be published Frontenac House in 2025.