MCLC: Terror poems

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Terror poems
Yi Sha 伊沙 has two prominent poems written after 9/11. One is a "psychological report" of watching the attacks on TV. The second poem comes from reports of a manual connected to the attackers. The quotes in the poem must be from Chinese translations of English translations of a text or texts in Arabic. At first I thought if I was going to translate Yi Sha's poem into English, I would have to find an English source of the Chinese source. I have found snippets on the internet, from the NY Review of Books and elsewhere. But they were not important for the translation. I wonder if this poem has been translated into English before. I did a German translation a while ago. Yi Sha's main 9/11 REPORT (see my English version) was not included in any publication that appeared outside China until 2012, as far as I know. For me, the most important feature of both poems is the perspective of sympathizing with, or identifying with the terrorists. Where can you do that, except in very shady and terrible places? In this poem, I think there are no actual traces of 9/11, at least compared to the REPORT. In China, you often hear about terror in or from Xinjiang. Outside of China, you hear more about attacks by state security forces on Uighur suspects. A few days ago, 17 people were killed, including women and children, as far as I heard. In China, there are no such reports, unless you scale the Great Firewall. But there is poetry. Poetry goes largely unchecked, except for self-censorship.
The damaged subject. Aggression largely outside of intellectual life, education and culture. Loss of speech, of articulation. Yi Sha's work bears many possibilities for associations. This second 9/11 poem is included in the 2009 anthology published in Taiwan by Huang Liang 黄梁. It is more playful, at least in the end, and maybe thus more acceptable. You can find the original on my blog.
Yi Sha 《閱讀指令》
READING ORDERS
in these few days
I’ve read them again and again
four pages of orders
left behind by the suicide terrorists
“now is the time
you have to get up
get dressed as fast as you can”
so I get up
get dressed
“now is the time
go wash yourself
go to the bathroom
look into the mirror
get rid of unnecessary
small hairs on your face”
so I wash myself
and listen to
the sound of my razor
“now is the time
you have to go out
go downstairs call a taxi
when you sit in the cab
you will feel nervous
and the best method
against feeling nervous
you smile at the driver
when you get to the airport
you smile at everyone”
so I go out
call a cab, smiling
“now is the time
use your small dagger and your iron will
a massacre is about to begin”
I feel distracted –
are these two lines from a poem?
then something makes we weak altogether:
“now is the time
you must go through death
to enter paradise
the virgins in paradise
are already prepared
in their most beautiful clothes
to welcome you”
and so I decide
to give up the mission
they should not have said that
as soon as I read it I thought
maybe I don’t have to die
don’t have to kill so many people
to get at this thing
2001
Tr. Martin Winter, Nov. 2015
Best,
Martin
by denton.2 at osu.edu on November 19, 2015
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