Hu Sang — “In the Center of Nothingness,” “Recurring Tides” & “Memorizing the Future in a City of Shadows” — translated by Weijia Pan


In the Center of Nothingness

In a city that boasts certainty,

my body wakes up in denial.

I toss and turn, hearing myself, as if

an ocean, having lost its sound,

still greeting everyone in the morning.

My phone, supine, competes with darkness,

forcing me to acknowledge distance and speed.

I hear the traffic of this city roaring like waves

in endless motion.

I wake outside myself:

this empty night finally owns me,

allowing me to gaze distantly at your lack of speed,

allowing my wakefulness to flow into yours.

Recurring Tides

Waiting, from the depth of a lotus,

with the scorching sun, the slowing mountains,

and our tightening faith,

for a sound that comes for an appointment.

It might not come. Only this promise

quickens our breath.

Our body, desire, and this landscape

delay our days neatly, like a coming tide.

But such delay is a fact we cannot disown.

Our relationship with the world

is no longer impatient.

To keep this vow, we endure the heat.

Life is nothing but a long wait.

A river roars—isn’t this the second half of our lives?

Silence is woven into its sound

as we wait for reconciliation.

The tide stirs the gazes on both shores

like the wings of birds.

The past, after the gathering, flows into the future

while every one of us (yourself included),

in gazing, let one river disappear into another.

Every drop of water marries

the muddy and vast surge coming forth.

Time stands still. We ask for nothing else.

While I merge quietly with this momentary gaze

for the next second to surpass the grass and trees around us.

I guard this speed, its vastness and precision.

Memorizing the Future in a City of Shadows

I

A road breaks the day: a river trembles like orchids,

the sky flips and cries out, falling into a shaded shrub.

Spring deserves our praise. A hand stretches out from the window

to catch the void and dust, caressing the few pedestrians in the wilderness.

The buildings are cold, inland seas, newly dug for quarantine.

Which soapberry wants to wake up? Will this April truly bloom?

So many souls resurrected, mottled with mildew.

Shadows knit a paradise, sweeping through rainless whirlpools.

A forgiving whale wades through turbulent corridors and twilight lamps

and swallows, in hunger, this antibody-producing dusk.

II

In the deep blue, we store up our gazes

to turn around and see groceries being delivered outside the window.

Glass records the pale fire, reflecting the murky Milky Way:

With a little silence, our future can pour out.

For twenty years, we have learned to rest at a quay,

lived with tribulus, yet our mirrors are full of expectant white gulls.

Stagnant, we sleep sorrowfully, with immune fins beside us,

a wave brave enough to dilute the cold streams of forgiveness in our bodies.

Remember those islanded moments, a warm current

pausing mid-air, with turtledoves circling, guarding the netted door.