Dumplings - 英文诗尝试
今天看完Billy Collins的写诗lecture想到他强调要多多瞎写,多多瞎读,多让诗带着自己走,而不要寄希望于事前就想透一首诗。于是在晚饭煮饺子间隙拿起久违的纸笔,胡乱涂抹几句,竟然也很快写成了我的第一首英文诗。
Dumplings
One should pick up the dumplings
a while after they begin to float,
which would be, again, several minutes
after the melted lard starts to seep through
their soft white skin, into the boiling water
they are cooked in, water that my parents
call “bianshi soup” and always drink up
to conclude a dumpling dinner.
One cannot be too careful tending to their dumplings.
My grandmother used to say that
as I and my younger cousins watched her
tend to her dumplings, our dumplings,
in the old, wretched wok, heated by flames
and fumes from the wood chunks
that our parents had thrown into the stove
a little while before it began to snow outside
of the wobbly mudbrick hut, in which
we were prepared to greet a new year.
Grandmother’s dumplings had a special scent
that none of the kids liked, the same way
we all disliked coming back to this rural home
that had no floors, ceilings, no toilets or TVs, but only
mud all around, and a naked wire hanging
from above our heads, pulling up a light bulb
that dispelled the night in the rest of the air.
And that scent would come out again,
and again and again, when grandmother
lifted the wooden lid, poured some cold water
into the wok, and sat silently by the radiating heat
of the boiling dumplings, which were bound to
float up (and sink) three times
before being served for a big dinner.
After all, one can never be too careful
tending to their dumplings,
especially in the winter, especially
at their own home, and
especially if a year is nearing its end.
4/18/2021, NYC
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