MY LOVE AND HATE RELATIONSHIP WITH MT. QINLING By Nan Shutang

MY LOVE AND HATE RELATIONSHIP WITH MT. QINLING

By Nan Shutang

The reason why I hated it

was because it blocked my view, pretending

to be the end of the world. Still, it served

as a prison where I jailed people and things

that I loved to hate but dared not hate.

I took it all out on Mt.Qinling,

so when I hated you, and you, once, twice, and thrice,

I piled my hatred mountain high;

surely one of Qinling’s peaks was my work.

Hear the rainless thunder from the mountain,

hear its echoes spreading hatred.

But I loved it, too, though knew not how to say it

the way birds sang their praises

or peach blossoms showed their ardent love.

The craggy headstone and hardy grass

around my father’s grave spoke for my constant love,

which I simply wrote down as a list of words

and arranged them based on a secret formula,

just like a pharmacist writing out a prescription,

then fed them to the spring breeze and autumn wind.

The peak of the mountain is said to grow at a rate of two millimeters per year.

Does that growth partly come from the power of my love?

Nowadays I am more nonchalant,

very little love or hatred involved,

and the mountain seems to treat me just the same way,

listening to me calmly

without a trace of joy or sadness.

Now I can sit down with it snugly

and strike up a conversation.

If my past love and hatred could be returned to me,

I will use that love to backfill the cavities

undermined by hatred, so that we will see,

between the steep cliff faces and deep trenches,

some gentler landforms worthy of our trust.

About the poet:

Nan Shutang, a native of Shangluo, Shaanxi Province, is a member of the China Writers Association and a contracted writer of the Shaanxi Literature Institute.