Photograph: Du Fu’s Thatched Cottage, Chengdu, Sichuan, China
Ma Yongbo 马永波 travelled here by train 3rd May 2025, staying for several days
Du Fu Thatched Cottage 杜甫草堂
You can light a lamp in the cottage, sweep the floor, brew tea,
waiting for the rain, waiting for the wind—but not listening for the sound of the wind，
nor are there any cranes calling in the wind, portending anything,
the great river flows east, yet the low clouds over it remain motionless for a long time.
This is an obscure city; the flowers are heavy with last night’s rain,
near the Washing flowers Stream, you settle your equally heavy middle age,
winter feels like spring—the rain turns to mist that lingers, refusing to dissipate,
or condenses in the moss on the steps, deepening its green.
In the Washing flowers Stream, are there really women washing flowers with complicated petals,
dying the water a rouge-red? perhaps this is not the first time you have been here
the last time was in a distant dynasty, driving a lean donkey,
carrying a bundle of thatch from beyond the Jianmen Pass through endless winter rains
hesitating between life and death, stubborn as that donkey,
lingering between dry thatch and thatch blackened by the rain.
On paper you draw a chessboard, and also draw the people’s rivers and mountains,
along with your real estate developer’s ideals. A residence of three years and nine months,
a temporary respite in the midst of chaos. When the rain from the leaking roof soaks the quilt,
you should realise that this world has always been a stage made of thatch—
not a magnificent hall, not a thatched cottage, only some straw figures standing above,
looking down on the multitude, and you are among them, like a somewhat bored tourist.
Response Poetry By Ma Yongbo 马永波
Response Poetry Translated By Ma Yongbo 马永波
First Published 6th October 2025 https://pandemoniumjournal.com/du-fu-thatched-cottage-by-ma-yongbo/
Photograph: Du Fu’s Thatched Cottage, Chengdu, Sichuan, China
Ma Yongbo walking past 1000 poems by Du Fu carved onto stone plaques
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/xA8KKn-OX2k
杜甫草堂 Du Fu Thatched Cottage
你可以在草堂里点灯，打扫，烹茶
等雨来，等风来，但不是听风声
也没有什么仙鹤在风中鸣叫，预示些什么
大江东去，江上低垂的云却依然久久不动
这是个晦涩的城市，花朵因昨夜的雨而沉重
你在浣花溪附近安顿下同样沉重的中年
冬天也像是春天，雨水都化成了雾气，久久不散
或是凝结在台阶上的苔藓里，加深它的绿色
浣花溪里，真的有女子清洗花瓣繁复的花朵吗
将溪水染成胭脂红？或许你不是第一次来到这里
上一次是在一个遥远的朝代，赶着一匹瘦驴
在连绵冬雨中，从剑门关外运来一捆茅草
在生与死之间犹豫，就像那头驴一样倔强
徘徊在干茅草和被雨变黑的茅草之间
在纸上画下棋盘，也画下人民的江山
和你那房地产商的理想。三年零九个月的居留
离乱中暂时的喘息，漏屋之雨浇湿被子的时候
你应该想到，这世界本就是个草台班子
不是华堂，不是草堂，只有一些草人站在上面
俯视着芸芸众生，而你就置身其中，像一个有点无聊的游客
2025年9月22日下午，忆春游成都杜甫草堂景区有感
within these nights there is the sleeping yellow thatch 在这些有黄茅草沉睡的夜晚
with or without the comfort of the moon.
The stretching stalks run from yellow silver
to their dark and colourless outlines,
like the stowed bristles of a swept yard.
Lamplight wrings strange shadows from the straw,
elongated and ethereal friends; me again, and again.
Humans inherit loneliness from mountains,
everything hewn has felt tenderness.
The sickle glinting on the wooden beam reflects
my friendship with the separating stars,
as greystone and ragged as you, my worn donkey,
rain tugging at your fur, shaping it like grey thatch
7th October 2025, written in response to ‘Du Fu Thatched Cottage’ by Ma Yongbo
Response Poetry By Helen Pletts 海伦·普莱茨
Translated by Ma Yongbo 马永波
在这些有黄茅草沉睡的夜晚 within these nights there is the sleeping yellow thatch
无论有没有明月的慰藉。
伸展的茅秆由金黄转为银灰
渐渐变成暗淡无色的轮廓，
如同庭院清扫后收起的帚芒。
灯光从茅草间蠕动出奇异的影子，
细长而飘逸的伙伴；一次次，都是我。
人类从山中继承了孤独，
所有被砍伐的东西都曾感受到温柔。
木梁上闪烁的镰刀，映照着
我与渐行渐远的星辰的友谊，
如同你，我疲惫的驴子，灰石一般褴褛，
雨水拉扯着你的毛发，将它塑造成灰色的茅草。
2025年10月7日，回应永波的《杜甫草堂》
Photograph: Du Fu’s Thatched Cottage, Chengdu, Sichuan, China
Photograph: Ma Yongbo arriving at Du Fu’s Thatched Cottage, Chengdu, Sichuan, China
Photograph: Ma Yongbo, Chengdu, Sichuan
Poet Ma Yongbo was born in 1964 in Heilongjiang Province, China. As a poet, he is repre-sentative of Chinese avant-garde poetry. He is also a leading scholar in Anglo-American postmodernist poetry. Since 1986 Ma has published over eighty original works and translations. He is a professor in the Faculty of Arts and Literature, Nanjing University of Science and Technology. His studies center around Chinese and Western modern poetics, post-modern literature, and eco-criticism.
How To Be A Poet In China-I by Ma Yongbo
free pdf booklets I and II available here
How To Be A Poet In China-II By Ma Yongbo
October 10, 2025Limited Editions, Modern Poetry, PoetryFast & Cheap, How to Be A Poet In China-II, independent publishers, indie publishers, limited editions, literature, Ma Yongbo, Neo-Mimeo Editions, new titles, Nualláin House
How To Be A Poet In China I – Cover image
How To Be A Poet In China II – Cover image
Photograph: Helen Pletts, Cambridge, 21st August 2025
Helen Pletts is a British poet based in Cambridge, whose work has been translated into Chinese, Bangla, Greek, Vietnamese, Croatian, Serbian, Korean, Egyptian and Italian. She is the English co-translator of Chinese poet Ma Yongbo.
“Reading the poems of Helen Pletts translated by Yongbo truly made my heart tremble softly, as if there were many paths we have not walked, like Frost’s The Road Not Taken, weaving through the silver fibres of her poetry. Inner experience and natural experience merge like a flowing stream, and it seems that everyone can only capture certain echoes of them, just as we once gazed at them for a long time, only for them to disappear. “
(Liu Zeqiu, poet, critic, editor-in-chief of Existence Poetry Journal)
Specific photographic images/graphic art under individual copyright © to either Ma Yongbo 马永波 or Helen Pletts 海伦·普莱茨
.