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A Man Is Leaving the North

By Yan An, translated by Chen Du and Xisheng Chen

A plane and its trail of black smoke over the Qin Mountains
Are the masks of the North and the celestial dome
A crow and its hesitant flight    are the masks
Of a summer high noon    with an unknown outcome

A man    is trekking uneasily in the northern wilderness
Being far off    sometimes he is as tiny as an ant
He is practicing Chinese Mandarin on his own
Planning to disguise himself before leaving his homeland
For a train station in winter and an airport in summer
As a mask of the earth about to journey to a remote land

The man about to leave the North
Is preparing never to return again
Yet he finds that    a lone chimney in the moors
With a wisp of languid and listless smoke above it
Seems like a doomsday fish diving upside-down in the ocean
And abruptly concealing itself in the depths
As if it were mourning a nameless summer
And ninety-nine nameless masks about to be exhibited
In a meeting of the summer held on pine branches

In the nameless summer    with layers of masks
And a man about to leave the North
Even a plane and an entire train cannot carry
His shadow and the heaviness
As anonymous as a mask    yet faint and blurred
In his innermost heart