3 Poems by Diablo

The Doomsday 

These years
You peddle yourself to the world
Like a politician
More like an old hand in love affairs

These years
You and the world flatter one another
Like a pair of actors
More like a pair of gays

Oh, these years
You sleep together with the world
But you have known nothing about the world
Oh, these years
The Aeolian bells in heaven are like a drunkard
Limping along the tunnel of time


A Lyric a bout “Ah”

Ah, dear cat
Please come and eat a famous poem
Ah, dear dog
Please come and eat a bunch of sweet flowers
Ah, dear tiger
Please come and eat a white cloud
Ah, dear shark
Please come and eat a beam of sunlight
Ah, dear dinosaur
Please come and eat a bit of air
Ah, dear motherland
Please come and eat a bite of liberty

Ah, the ubiquitous “Ah”
Ah, the all-pervasive “Ah”


In Memory of a Butchered Chicken

Yesterday afternoon
I went out to buy a chicken
In the farmer’s market
It is moist all around the ground
In the air
The smell of rotten vegetables filled …
The chickens were put into
A big wire cage by a chicken trafficker
Beside it was a hair removal machine
Their feather on the ground around it
When I approached to the cage
They crowded around in horror
I pointed one of them I wanted to buy
Ask him to weigh it
When he reached
His hands stuck with a few pieces of feather
Into the wire cage
Faced with the extinction the chicken
Was actually motionless
It confirms
A familiar Chinese idiom
—Dumb as a wooden chicken
After weighed
He held
A gleaming knife
Aligning it’s neck
To force a touch
A surge of blood
Was instantly gushing...
Immediately
The chicken
Was thrown into the machine
And then
He fetched a scoop of
Scalding water pouring down—
It screamed again and again
That also sparked those chickens in the cage
A scene of screaming …
Whine
Weakened finally
Until it disappeared in the chilly wind—
He had
Already opened
His machine to stir…
After a moment
A naked chicken
Right under my nose
Was chopped into pieces
At the same time
The chickens in the cage
Had also calmed down
They
Began pecking at the feed
Feeding by their master
Some began to smooth their feather
Some crowed
Some were fighting for food
What a peaceful and happy scene it was
As if their fellows’ fate
Did not link together with them at all
Just now what had happened
Also seemed to be a nightmare
Now
All was calm again…

(Translated by Sophy Chen）


Bionote

Diablo is a distinguished poet and critic in contemporary China. His original name is Zhang Zhi, his English name is Arthur Zhang; His other pen name is Wu Yuelou (Moonless Tower); He is a Litt D., Honor Humanities D., was born in Fenghuang Town, Baxian County, Sichuan Province in 1965; his ancestral home is in Nan’an District, Chongqing City. He has worked a variety of career. He is now president of the International Poetry Translation and Research Centre, executive editor-in-chief of The World Poets Quarterly (multilingual), editor-in-chief of WORLD POETRY YEARBOOK (English Version), and foreign academician of Greek International Literature & Arts and Science Academy. Since 1986, he began to publish his works of literature and translation. His poems and prosework have been translated into over twenty kinds of foreign languages such as English, French, German, Japanese, Russian, Greek, Spanish, Portuguese, Polish, Romanian, Danish, Hungarian, Bengali, Italian, Swedish, Korean, Slavic-Mongolian, Serbian, Rabbinic, Arabic, Slovak, and Bulgarian, etc. His poetry works has won prizes in Greece, Brazil, USA, Israel, France, India, Italy, Austria and Lebanon. His major publications include: RECEITA (Portuguese-English-Chinese); Selected Poems of Diablo (English); Poetry by Zhang Zhi (German-English-Portuguese); Selected Poems of Diablo (Chinese-English) and The Serial Comments on the Vanguard Poets in Contemporary China. He is the compiler of four poetry selections such as Selected Poems of the International Contemporary Poets (English-Chinese); Selection of 20th Century New Chinese Poetry (Chinese-English) , The Book Series of World Poets (Bilingual) , A Dictionary of Contemporary International Poets (Multilingual), and Chinese-English Reader: 300 New Chinese Poems (1917—2011), etc.