Remembering My Late Elder Brother Yongping While Passing Shaojia Mountain
- Ma Yongbo
- Feb 16
- 1 min read
Between presence and absence, the hillside is covered with mixed trees.
Green leaves haven't concealed the brown and half-damp earth.
Birdsong urges the fleshy petals of the white magnolia to set sail.
What opens her chest isn't the lightness of gauze,
but the ever-shrinking versions of ego, one nests within another.
It seems I haven't climbed this mountain for many years.
This morning, walking past its edge,
the swarms of mosquitoes still gather in the rusty water.
The pale roots of wild garlic continue to stretch.
The wartime bunker of the training corps
still watches over the path leading up and down.
Everything fluctuates between clarity and obscurity,
but you alone are both here and not.
You are beyond the mountains, above the mountains,
walking endlessly between sleep and wakefulness.
Seeking, meeting, parting—it's all just
the black mud left in the flood’s wake, a wildflower feast.
For better or worse, such is the toil of this life, and the craft of poetry.
Ma Yongbo
Ma Yongbo, Ph.D, was born in 1964. A Chinese poet and a leading scholar in poetry, he has published over eighty original works and translations. He also translates and teaches American poetry, including the works of Dickinson, Whitman, Stevens, Pound, Williams, and Ashbery.
After my elder brother, poet Yongping died, I passed by the hill where our brothers often walked and talked about poetry together, and wrote this poem on my mobile phone. I am very grateful to the editor for publishing it. I often think that each of us, eventually, will give our loved ones the most painful blow with our own departure. Cherish the present, and keep eternity in mind. thanks again!