You’ve been practicing the tune of “The Bird Singing in the Hollow Mountain”
when you heard the bird’s song.
A purple magnolia twig sways.
The bird has flown off.
Twenty-one magnolia flowers,
twenty-one flaming coils.
There is a point of self-inflammation in the wind,
magnolia has become the center of dialogues.
Desire swirls around the coil. Words blossom.
The flaming coil starts to sing.
The sound of your instrument and the bird’s song,
whose sound is responsible for this?
Hui Di (pen name Xin Hui Fan) is a poet, essayist, editor and translator living in Beijing.
Miroslav Kirin is a published poet from Croatia who has written more than ten volumes of poetry, two books of short fiction, a novel and a children’s picture book. He has read and studied contemporary Chinese poetry for almost two decades. He was invited to Beijing’s Home of International Poets within the Shangyuan Art Scene in summer 2014, where he worked with Hui Di and translated several of his poems into both Croatian and English.