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Translated Poetry: “the infinite possibilities of trees” by Xiao Xi 小西

I recently had to deal with a very unfortunate and unprofessional incident where a Canadian literary magazine published a poem translation of mine without providing me or the author contracts to secure our written permissions before they went to print. The translated text was also published without the Chinese source text because they declined to do so.

I have decided to publish the original text and my translation on my own website here, in the form that the work is meant to appear. Please support our work by reading this approved version instead. Thank you.

It’s truly a delight to present the work of Xiao Xi 小西, one of my favourite contemporary Sinophone poets. Enjoy! 


关于树的无数可能
小西

一棵树
有时是门,有时是床
有时是刀柄和菜板,弹弓和陀螺
有时是箱子,或者扁担
有时是一把琴,弹破了江山
有时是无数铁锹,掩埋了真相
有时是两个醒来的纸人
抬着棺木
去往天堂的路上,遇到了火

the infinite possibilities of trees
by Xiao Xi
translated by Yilin Wang from the Mandarin Chinese

a single tree
sometimes, it’s a door; sometimes, a bed
sometimes, a knife handle and a cutting board, a slingshot and a spinning top
sometimes, a storage box, or a carrying pole

sometimes, a lone qín, its chords shattering the kingdom’s rivers and mountains
sometimes, endless shovels, burying the truth

sometimes, two just-awoken people made of paper
shouldering a wooden coffin
on their way to heaven, they encounter bright flames


I have also created the following pages of white-out poetry using the page printed in the magazine.

“the infinite possibilities of not cutting mandarin”

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“the infinite possibilities re copyright”

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“the infinite possibilities of an apology times two” 

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“the infinite possibilities of translation carrying on”

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f you have enjoyed reading the above poem, please also check out my translations of Xiao Xi’s work in POETRY and Guernica. Xiao Xi’s work will also be featured in The Lantern and The Night Moths, an anthology of Chinese poetry that I have selected and translated, forthcoming in 2024 with Invisible Publishing. 

If you want to support Xiao Xi’s work, you can donate to my Ko-Fi, and put a note that this is for her. I will pass along all donations as a partial payment for her translation permission fee while we wait for this unfortunate contract situation to be sorted out.