Li Bing
Translated by Cecily Chen
伤害
“一点点伤害使它学会了呻吟——呻吟，生存，不知信仰为何物”——西川《致敬》
一点点伤害使我们学会了沉默。
不要在午夜回到黑暗的卧室，那里除了安眠药一无所有，不要趁着所有人熟睡的时候修剪指甲
痕迹不会在黑暗中被遮挡，就像白天里星星还在照耀我们。
我活了二十年。睡了六天，醒着一天。
向所有陌生人打招呼，向所有拥有信仰的人致敬，向所有躲在寂寞深处的人递上茶杯。在此之前，我打好了背包。门槛开始潮湿，天空像风筝被拉低。
一个少女在被单上看到死亡。
在街角，我撞见千千万万个奶奶，她们有着相同的皱纹和小脚，她们的嘴絮絮叨叨。昔日的往事挂在树梢，让所有看到自己的人摔倒。
盗墓者隐姓埋名而失掉身份，暴君终尝苦果但暴君不断。心虚的人被削果的刀子所伤，血迹已干的刀子被另一个路人拣起。
怀疑是哲学。噩梦是预言。如果小心翼翼的人更加小心翼翼，从不出错的就是在不断出错。
我的父亲是不是我的小学数学老师而在我回家的时候换了一张脸？我的肉体是不是夜间被陌生人盗取而我每天才在白天发现我一天天变老？我是不是死过，是唐朝的公主还是印度的乞丐转世？关于风景问题，时间只是一块磨得发亮的石头，倒映出宿命一致的人们。一个人的卧室，回音提醒着相同的空虚。
水龙头流出生命和碎片，有一天我发现它也会漏水。而我正好从上面走过，我的影子变成千万个实体，蒸气一样升腾。
他们会笑，会哭，会愤怒，会倒下倾听别人的脚步。她们睡觉时会把手放在枕头底下，想着那把虚幻的刀子，会如此尖锐。
Injury
“The smallest of injuries teaches it to moan—to moan, to survive, and oblivious to faith.” – Xi Chuan, “Salute”
The smallest of injuries teaches us silence.
Do not return to the darkened room at midnight, for there is nothing there but sleeping pills; do not trim your nails when everyone else is asleep, for the traces you leave will not be cloaked by darkness, just as the stars continue to shine even after the break of dawn.
I have lived for twenty years. Asleep for six days; awake for one.
Greeting every stranger; saluting every person of faith; offering a bowl of tea to every soul that lurks in the bowels of loneliness. In the moment before, I had fastened my satchel. The threshold is getting damp; the sky is low, like a kite drawn back to the earth.
A young girl sees death on her bedsheets.
On the street corner, I stumble across ten million grandmothers; they all have the same wrinkles and the same bound feet; they prattle on and on and on. Memories from a past life hang from the treetops, tripping over those that run into their own selves.
The gravedigger lives in anonymity but forgets his name; the tyrant falls on his sword yet tyranny persists. The one riddled with guilt slices himself with a fruit knife; the blood dries and the knife gets collected by another passerby.
Suspicion is doctrine. Nightmares are prophecies. If the hypervigilant becomes even more hypervigilant, to never err is to always be erroneous. Is my father in fact my mathematics teacher in elementary school who takes on a different face whenever I return home? Has my body been pilfered by strangers at night so that I only realize that I am aging every day in the morning? Have I been dead before, am I a Tang Dynasty princess or a vagrant from India reincarnate? On the question of scenery, time is nothing but a polished stone, reflecting back to the crowd their indistinguishable fates. A bedroom of one’s own; the echoes resound with the same banal emptiness.
Life and fragments flow from a tap; one day, I realize even that could be punctured. I happen to be strolling atop. My shadow transforms into a million different entities, ascending like steam.
They laugh, they cry, they sneer; they drop to the ground and they listen, enraptured, to the footfall of others. They slide one hand under the pillow as they rest, thinking about how even this phantasmic blade, could be so unforgiving.
Li Bing (1986~) graduated from the Guangxi University for Nationalities with a Masters degree in literature in 2008, with her thesis focusing on Chinese poet Xi Chuan. She self-published a poetry collection, Cabbage Conspiracy, in 2006.
Cecily Chen is a PhD student in English literature and gender and sexuality studies at the University of Chicago. Her work focuses on fucked up Chinese women and bad sex. When she isn’t pampering her cat, Colette, she also edits poetry for Chicago Review.