Hil Anderson and Keith Waldrop

translate Xue Di

Hotel Viking

In the wake of a prefabricated passenger ship

the ocean, as if with an old cotton blanket

weighs deeply on a body wide awake

The sky in the eyes of a scattered school of fish

grows brighter and brighter. The bridge that spans the

brine crosses also the opaque middle-aged mind

dark path between two precise terms

My mother grieving

writes to her faraway son

Waterbirds, lonely, follow the lights

toward regions of cold where they hover

This evening the hotel room’s thermosystem

thundered without rest. Number 634

said the key in the unlit hallway

In my homeland some valuable

persons are disappearing

Local Winter

They tear yesterday off the calendar, hailing

the snow that drifts along state highways

Stags die on exit 3 ramp

Old folks lost on downtown

intersections. Pedestrians

going the right direction all

fagged out. Imitation river

passes beneath asymmetric bridge. The homeless

stand on the bridge to watch

brief fireworks for Watch Night

Snow falls now

over exit 3

Policemen estimate inches of snow

travelers from elsewhere curse

Local expressway drivers lean on their

horns, brought to a halt by a hideous carcrash

A new billboard towers

gigantic in the snow:

HOPE FOR RHODE ISLAND

JESUS STILL THE ANSWER

Patriots beaten in yesterday’s

final. Drastic cold front

continues. More viruses brought

into this close and frigid little city

by returning businessmen

For sale signs proliferate, up

all winter. Shoals of

sea birds, wild ducks, motionless

prone on that most famous local

lake, now frozen, deadly

Repitition

Living in the love of a local woman

intense and beautiful

Lost feet

walking an old wall

Winter’s garden

slimming him while he sleeps alone

The heart is an empty place to work

a small town’s only river

sick lovers crowding in. Sun on

snow seems like weight being lost

Mango, the day’s delight

Discontent wedges the memory

A man forced to leave his home gazes

seaward, longs for a school of dead fish held

fast. Time’s inner organs

degenerate in a foreign land, decay

In a life without imagination even poetry

grows dark again. Like this land

dusty beyond consumption

Winter’s lake, lake the locals

point out to outsiders

Lovers expressing calm

many and together

on the bright ice

Sweet Jazz

Love with care. Loving you

amber in sick flesh

east of China. When I love, a

pair of goat horns seems more

crooked. Our love’s closest ocean’s

salt flows into the

one dog’s eye. Those labyrinthine

eyes once deeply loved

Those fires—the river at nightfall

carries them away. Horses vanish

night owl of the east. When torso and torso

like two lakes flow together, lips like

fish on a dive to the lake’s bottom

Our love’s closest village

all the ponies jolted from their dreams

to happy waking

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