Bicycles in the Sixties
Early morning, free of clothes
I stay indoors, coolness like a fine silk covers my skin.
I light up a cigarette, and reopen the book
to where I left off yesterday, the small town
in Ireland where Beckett spent his childhood,
his father taking him to Dublin in 1916.
There, the burning fires of an uprising
troubled him all his life.
In my youth—the Cultural Revolution—
the buses roaring through the streets
with Red Guards brandishing guns, tearing down the replicated
Imperial Dam. It was time to “Break the Four Olds”.
I remember leaving home for middle school
two miles away, and saw a young guard in glasses
raised his gun and started shooting porcelain vases
off the power poles.
Shattered pieces flew like birds in all directions.
Armed conflict. The corpse wrapped in asphalt,
abandoned in a roadside truck, shone a blackened light
in the sun. And my mother, head of a small factory unit,
wanted by the opposing faction of the Red Guards,
fled to someplace remote, in fear.
I returned home and saw grandmother worried, a blackened light
in her eyes.
.
by Sun Wenbo
from Poetry International
translation Ming Di and Neil Aitken
六十年代的自行车
.
轻贴在皮肤上。点燃一支香烟，
我坐下来，把昨天没读完的书重新翻开；
爱尔兰小镇上，贝克特度过他的童年；
一九一六年，父亲带他到都柏林，
一场起义燃烧的大火让他惊恐，
嵌入他的记忆，成为一生都困扰他的情景。
我的童年：文化大革命。同样目睹了
很多混乱的事件：大街上呼啸的
汽车上挥舞枪的红卫兵，破四旧
推掉的皇城坝。这些也深深嵌入
我的记忆。我还记得离家
半里多路的西乡中学，一场武斗过后，
一个戴眼镜的红卫兵举枪射击
电杆上的瓷瓶，瓷瓶被击碎像鸟四处飞散；
也记得路边一辆废弃的卡车上的
被沥青裹住的尸体，在阳光下
发出的黑黝黝的光亮；以及我的母亲
作为产业军的小头目被另一派通辑，逃到外地，
外婆从早到晚为她担惊受怕；如今
外婆已死去多年，可我仍能
看见她听到母亲逃跑时，脸上的表情。
（《六十年代的自行车》序曲）