Startling Hair
The swirling poles of the barber shopsswirl at greater and greater speedSome lie horizontally now, smashing the normSome have become rings with added colorsThey used to wash our hair after cutting itNow the order’s reversedMother had insisted on our headsbeing shaved bare—She smiles in the mirrorat our faces in tearsSweet-smelling talcum powderfrom a feathery brushComic books commandeered on lapsPages flipping as if blown by the windAcross the arms of the barber’s chairrests a wooden boardWe sit up straight with pridethough sometimes we grumblehoping for a daywhen it can be cast asideBefore and behind the mirror people come and goWithin and beyond the mirrorspring flowers bloom and the autumn moon wanesHairstyles evolveeach one timelier than the lastHolding up a mirrorI admire myself moreand more each timeuntil one dayshaking the endless hair clippingsfrom our necks, we’re startledby the absence of Mother’s facein a mirror full of facesI turn around abruptlyin a panic, but fortunatelyI see Mother just walking in from the alleybringing the soft, lightfeeling of a barber’s brushand the sweet-smelling memoriesof talcum powdereven though her hair turned white overnightand we brothersdon’t look in the mirror much anymoreso that’s why we know nothingwhy it seems we know nothing 驚髮理髮店的旋轉標誌旋轉得越來越急速有的橫放， 打破規格有的變作圓環，多了些顏色從前剪了髮才洗頭現在次序顛倒母親硬要我們的頭剪得光脫脫的那時我們哭喪着臉她卻朝鏡子裏笑軟綿綿的毛絨球香撲鼻的爽身粉連環圖一本本霸在膝上一頁頁如風吹揭理髮椅的扶手橫架一塊木板坐在上面挺威風的我們又每每惱怨想望一天隨手可把它扔掉⋯⋯鏡子前後， 人來人往鏡子裏外春花秋月嬗變的髮式一次比一次趨時攬鏡自照一次比一次更鍾愛自己直到一天脖子上抖落未盡細碎的髮屑我們驚覺鏡裏眾多容顏獨不見母親猛然轉過頭來慌亂中幸好見母親剛從巷口走進且帶來輕軟茸茸毛絨球的感覺和爽身粉般香撲鼻的記憶雖則， 她的鬢髮一夜白了而我們兄弟多人近日少從鏡裏回望所以一無所知彷彿一無所知
Feature Date
- December 12, 2022
Series
- Translation, What Sparks Poetry
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“Startling Hair” from MOVING A STONE: SELECTED POEMS OF YAM GONG
Published by Zephyr Press on May 31, 2022.
English Copyright © 2022 by James Shea and Dorothy Tse.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.
Born in 1949, Yam Gong is a celebrated Hong Kong poet whose honors include the Hong Kong Youth Literature Award, the Workers’ Literature Award, and the Hong Kong Biennial Award for Chinese Literature for his first book And So You Look at Festival Lights along the Street (1997). He later published an extended edition of this collection, titled And So Moving a Stone You Look at Festival Lights along the Street (2010).
James Shea is the author of two poetry collections, The Lost Novel and Star in the Eye, both from Fence Books. Recipient of grants from the Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program, Hong Kong Arts Development Council, and National Endowment for the Arts, he is the director of the Creative and Professional Writing Program at Hong Kong Baptist University.
Dorothy Tse is a Hong Kong fiction writer whose books include Owlish and So Black. Tse has received the Hong Kong Book Prize, Unitas New Fiction Writers’ Award (Taiwan), and the Hong Kong Award for Creative Writing in Chinese. She has been a resident at Art Omi, the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program, and the Vermont Studio Center.
"...a vivid array of poems from work written over four decades... Yam Gong’s metaphysical searching, his oblique meaning-making, and his witty, allusive wordplay are all evident..."
—Heather Green, Poetry Foundation's "Harriet Books"
"No recommendation of Yam Gong’s poems could be as effective as simply reading one… a self-taught, blue-collar laborer, he’s developed a strikingly vivid poetic language by mixing colloquial Cantonese with more literary dictions and wild, mythic imagery. The terrific introduction to this book includes biographical information and notes on a translation that must negotiate into English, for instance, an expression which has the double meaning of receiving a lung X-ray and being scolded by a superior. I’ve never read anything like this!"
—Forrest Gander
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