At dark night I looked at

The bizarre shape of the Astrology Museum

On a street called Nameless

With its dome locked by fog

And the trees on both sides of the street

Divested of foliage

And piercing the body of the thick fog

With their naked boughs

A female sanitation worker in a yellow vest

Is indulging in sweeping the dark toned light

All over the street

And the last batch of yellow leaves

Pressed to the bottom of the light

The overcast sky just like the gray fog

Seems to snow but with unspeakable concerns

Hesitates about whether or not it should snow

雾和黄叶

夜深了我看了看那条名叫莫名的大街上

被雾锁住穹顶的星象博物馆奇异的外形

和街道两侧落光了叶子

用赤条条的枝干刺穿浓雾身体的树

穿黄马甲的女清洁工正埋头清扫

满大街色调低沉的灯光

和压在那灯光底部的最后一批黄叶

天灰茫茫的就像雾是灰茫茫的一样

看样子是要下雪了但又有着难言的顾虑

为到底下不下一场雪而犹豫着

Yan An is the author of fourteen poetry books. His poetry book, A Naturalist’s Manor, translated by Chen Du and Xisheng Chen was published by Chax Press and was shortlisted for the 2022 Lucien Stryk Asian Translation Prize, administered by the American Literary Translators Association. The poem published here is from Yan An’s most famous book, Rock Arrangement, which has won him The Sixth Lu Xun Literary Prize.

Chen Du has a Master’s Degree in Biophysics from Roswell Park Cancer Institute, SUNY at Buffalo and another from the Chinese Academy of Sciences. In the United States, her translations, poems, and essays have appeared in nearly forty literary journals. Contact her at of_sea@hotmail.com.

Xisheng Chen, a Chinese American, is an ESL grammarian, lexicologist, linguist, translator and educator. His working history includes: Adjunct Professor at the Departments of English and Social Sciences of Trine University (formerly Tri-State University), Indiana. As a translator for over three decades, he has published many translations in various fields in newspapers and journals in China and abroad.