CORNERS by Zhang Hongbo

CORNERS

by Zhang Hongbo

You thought the boundless grassland has no corners:

the night misty and rainy,

a place entangled with weeds,

and shiny puddles broken by horses’ swift hooves.

But what lies ahead is darkness like a giant boulder.

That is the next turn,

no matter how celebrated you were,

moving forward ahead, you will vanish into the distance.

But we don't pause to pray.

It’s not yet dawn when the dahlias come in bloom.

Let the horse's whip be heard across the field,

let us skip over the antlers in the riverbed,

and fling your backpack on the river bank.

Tonight, a rainy night, you are a god, a hero.

Like an arrow, you fly around the fortress’ corner like a gust of wind,

firing raindrops to the end of the sky.

About the poet:

Zhang Hongbo was born in 1956. He began literary writing in the late 1970s and joined the China Writers Association in March 1990. He has published more than 30 books covering lyrical poems, children's poems, prose essays, fairy tales and calligraphy works. He worked in North China Oilfield for nearly twenty years, and his long poem Crossing the Cenozoic Era, published by Huashan Literature and Art Publishing House, won the First Prize for 1995 Creative Achievements of the China Petroleum Writers Association. He now lives in Changchun, Jilin, devoting himself to reading and writing.