ON OLD SLATE MOUNTAIN, I SAW TURTLEDOVES by Jian Nan

ON OLD SLATE MOUNTAIN, I SAW TURTLEDOVES

by Jian Nan

At dawn's first light, I saw turtledoves,

waking up in their warm nest.

These plump birds, whom classic tongue likes to mock,

and even Zhuangzi ruled them to be short-sighted,

are sitting, cooing on twigs of an oak tree.

For the longest time, I haven’t seen

turtledoves looking so grand,

seemingly they needn't dodge bullets nor arrows;

life has become posh.

Watching these birds' short flight and wobble

between shrubs, oak trees, and cinnamon trees

as if that were the limit of their world,

it triggers in me, a dispirited middle-aged man

in the gloomy woods, a renewed cheerfulness in my steps.

About the poet:

Jian Nan, originally named Lu Xiongfei, is a native of Tongcheng, Hubei Province. He graduated from the Chinese Department of Central China Normal University. He began his literary creation in the late 1980s and has published poems, novels, prose and critical essays. Some of his poems have been selected into various anthologies and experimental Chinese textbooks for middle schools. His published works include Fervent Life, Loose Pages and Fragments and Selected Poems of Jian Nan. He now teaches at the School of Chinese Language and Literature of Central China Normal University and serves as chief editor of the magazine Chinese Teaching and Research.