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POETRY BY YUAN HONGRI

Yuan

Translations into English were performed by Manu Mangattu and Yuanbing Zhang

Yuan Hongri (born 1962) is a renowned Chinese mystic, poet, and philosopher. His work has been published in the UK, USA, India, New Zealand, Canada, and Nigeria; his poems have appeared in Poet’s Espresso Review, Orbis, Tipton Poetry Journal, Harbinger Asylum, The Stray Branch, Acumen, Pinyon Review, Taj Mahal Review, Madswirl, Shot Glass Journal, Amethyst Review, The Poetry Village, and other e-zines, anthologies, and journals. His best known works are “Platinum City” and “Golden Giant.” His works explore themes of prehistoric and future civilization.

 

THE FUTURE KINGDOM OF GIANTS

Though I might regret for myself when I turn dust
As I bid goodbye to this world,
I know there exists in the scrapbook of heaven
A gorgeous image of mine that often smiles to me in dreams;
That my olden words are engraved on primeval stones,
Yes! The apocalypse from the gods of heaven and earth!
I shall then be a future giant, to have carved
The platinum city of giants in the future Kingdom of giants.

AN OUTER WONDERLAND

Every tree is a philosopher.
Their roots took shape in the body of the earth;
Their domes bathed in the music of sun and stars.
To the black aloneness in my bones I listened;
I saw the ancient flowers from paradise.
A giant from mountains gave me an embroidered mirror,
Which mirrored a layered outer wonderland.

THE WORLD IS JUST A LIE

The world is just a lie,
truth is on the other side of the world.
We can neither see the light of time
nor know that everything is a shadow on the running water.
There is another me on another planet,
you have never been born or died.
When the maze becomes transparent, the door of time-space opens,
you will shake hands and smile with the giant in the heavens.
The words are both music and the epic of the soul,
Telling you that the palaces of outer space are incomparably lofty,
as if they are as endless as the mountains of gold.

THERE’S A MUCH LARGER WORLD IN THE BODY

There's a much larger world in the body
this is the secret that the ancient sages have told you.
Listening to the light pass through your body and play Guqin in your bones
noticed an old man, who was 30000 years old, sitting in a palace on the mountains top.

There is an island in the depths of the ocean,
the goddess was so brilliant before the world had been born.
Her eyes will make you forget the sadness,
for an instant, take you through those free and unfettered days outside.