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    A Distant Center
    A Distant Center
    A Distant Center
    Ebook84 pages29 minutes

    A Distant Center

    By Ha Jin

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    About this ebook

    In the bold tradition of the “Misty Poets,” Ha Jin confronts China’s fraught political history while paying tribute to its rich culture and landscape. The poems of A Distant Center speak in a voice that is steady and direct, balancing contemplative longing with sober warnings from a writer who has confronted the traumas of censorship and state violence. With unadorned language and epigrammatic wit, Jin conjures scenes that encompass the personal, historical, romantic, and environmental, interrogating conceptions of foreignness and national identity as they appear and seep into everyday interactions and being. These are poems that offer solace in times of political reaction and uncertainty. Jin’s voice is wise, comforting, and imploring; his words are necessary and his lessons are invaluable. Question your place in the world—do not be complacent—look for strength and hope in every nook: “Keep in mind the meaning of / your existence: wherever you land, / your footprints will become milestones.”
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCopper Canyon Press
    Release dateMay 1, 2018
    ISBN9781619321878
    A Distant Center
    Author

    Ha Jin

    Ha Jin left his native China in 1985 to attend Brandeis University. He is the author of two books of poetry; two collections of stories, Ocean of Words, which won the PEN/Hemingway Award in 1997, and Under the Red Flag, which won the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction in 1996; and In the Pond, a novel. He lives near Atlanta, where he is a professor at Emory University.

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      Book preview

      A Distant Center - Ha Jin

      A Solitary Traveler

      YOU MUST NOT RUN IN PLACE

      Don’t say since life is short and precarious,

      you want to live effortlessly.

      Don’t brag you will try to outsmart time —

      every day you’ll watch movies and eat dim sum

      while chatting idly with friends.

      Better keep busy like the others

      who work for a sack of rice or a set of clothes.

      See how steady those footsteps are on the wharf,

      look at the ships leaving the port —

      heavy, they are still going far.

      THE LONG-DISTANCE TRAVELER

      Keep going: the farther you go,

      the smaller you grow

      in the eyes of those

      who can’t walk anymore, until one day they can

      no longer see you. Then

      they will declare that you

      have disappeared, that

      your foolish choice will reduce you

      to a lonely ghost in the wilderness.

      Keep going, don’t turn to look back.

      Always carry enough food and water

      and follow no one’s map

      but your own. May you have

      fresh excitement every day, but don’t

      linger at any charming site for long. If you are

      blazing a path, do not expect to meet

      a fellow traveler. If by chance

      you go astray, you will still

      have the sun and stars.

      THE DETACHED

      Still I praise those who are detached

      from any land, who, since birth,

      have been determined to travel far in search

      of home. They get their bearings

      by stars, their roots growing at the end

      of the imagined sky.

      For them, life is a tortuous journey

      and every stop a new departure. They

      know they will disappear on the road,

      but as long as they are living,

      death keeps them company

      to the destination they have envisioned,

      though they have no idea

      whose maps their footprints might update.

      DIFFICULTIES

      Don’t mention your loss again.

      Indeed, you’ve lost so many things:

      home, jobs, family, a country.

      You landed in such a place

      where everything is strange,

      where you must start all over.

      Sometimes you are like a child

      who has just begun to talk,

      sometimes you are like an old woman,

      confused, unable to collect yourself.

      These years you have

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