The Chinese version of “in the timeless air” from Canto LXXVI—”in everlasting time and space”—deviates from the original meaning of the poem: here the timeless air refers to a space separated from time (an artificial thought). The world exists timelessly. What “everlasting time and space” emphasizes is the permanent unity of time and space. Because […]
Fiction 65
Yang Lian: Notes of a Blissful Ghost
1 leaking from the eye-socket dog dragging half-stripped dog skin running vision competes with stove-stuffed sparrow flying snow’s touch always half-rotted tumbledown ruins mask yesterday painted a colour less than white horizon sprints back against the wind toward a drop of water a teardrop has a pear-stalk to lead a great hue and cry bliss […]
Katrine Guldager: Earth
I don’t know what I came here for, only that everything else was impossible, that the little No I’m now holding up in front of me is just a sorry shield against an abundance of milky stars, a slip of meaning: Only that my little cardboard sign is just a hint of what is unused […]
Katrine Guldager: Traffic Accident
It’s hard to tell if there is something outside the window, but a chronic curiosity forces you to draw in, wind, people. It’s hard to tell how it happens, but you lean back in, into the shadow, and all senses are suddenly on DELETE: Suddenly you can’t remember why you leaned out or in, or […]
Katrine Guldager: Red
That’s what it’s like to be born: You never get a day off, you never have one minute to yourself, not a second where you can look the other way, or one where you can turn your back: That’s what it’s like to be born, there’s nothing you can do about it, the whole time […]
Katrine Guldager: Crash
It happens, of course, that you get a flat, that you will have to get by with one that’s too high: You cannot reach the pedals and there are cars and crosswalks and rights of way: There’s asphalt and strange inklings in your hands, accidents hanging in the wind, like seconds painted over with a […]