Issue 01｜Wu Xia
Wu Xia is one of two writers featured in the documentary Her Verse. Born in 1974 in rural Hubei, she lost her hearing at fourteen and left school soon after. She began writing at sixteen. At twenty-three, she moved to Nanjing alone, where she has lived ever since. She now waits tables at a Pizza Hut and writes in her rented room between shifts. Over three decades, she has written poetry, essays, and short fiction, and has published four books. Her work has appeared in People's Literature, and she is a member of the China Writers Association.
Ⅰ. Roots·来处
Where Wu Xia comes from: her father, his fields, and the solar terms that set the pace of farm work. She left that ground long ago, yet it is still where her writing begins.
想起父亲
想起父亲
不可分割地想到土地
土地比我更了解农民父亲
父亲日日在田里播种 哺育 收割
风调雨顺是父亲的笑容扩散的稻浪
天旱 雨涝时 父亲的额头聚拢着叹息
责任田是父亲的舞台 庄稼 蔬菜
旱地洒满父亲汗水的慷慨
父亲用虔诚孵出的果实
喂养我们几个孩子
24个节令在父母的嘴里刻成劳动的驿站
戴着麦草帽的父亲用18般农具
把生活丰收的希望从泥土里刨出
他粗粝长茧的双手撑出我们头顶上的无雨苍穹
他幽深的皱纹刻录着我们成长过程中叛逆的标点
想起父亲 就想起土地
我们是父亲种植的庄稼 在城市里冰冻的土壤里 探索生命的力量
Thinking of My Father
To think of Father
is to think of the land––
The earth knows my father the farmer
as only earth can.
Day after day in the fields
he sows, tends, reaps.
When wind and rain come in their time,
his smile runs through the rice.
When drought strikes or floods rise,
sighs plough his brow.
His plot of land is his stage:
grain, greens, dry ground—
all drink the sweat that streams down.
What his devotion coaxes from the earth
feeds us, his children.
On our parents’ tongues,
the year’s twenty-four turns
mark the miles of work.
Under his wheat-straw hat,
Father takes each tool in hand,
digging from the soil
the hope that life, too, will yield.
His calloused hands
hold up the sky, hold off the rain.
The creases in his face
bear the punctuation
of our defiance
as we grow.
To think of Father
is to think of the land.
We are the crops he planted,
feeling for root, for room to grow
in the city’s frozen soil.
Ⅱ. Elsewhere · 异乡
Where Wu Xia lives now: Nanjing, a lake where the city comes to swim and run at dawn, and avenues of plane trees whose leaves she gathers each autumn. She has lived here for nearly thirty years, and still writes of it as a place she might one day leave.
江浦象山湖
幸亏有一处镜子
照见不老村的蜕变 还有江浦的沧桑
在每个清早 黄昏 一波波市民前来朝圣
不老村的不老爱情
象山湖公园的文化长廊 象山长廊
晨泳人的波涛 长跑者的喘息
环湖路上的杨柳摇曳着诗句
鸟鸣 花香在朝霞里逶迤成一首诗
象山湖是一面镜子
隔离城市的车水马龙的喧哗和节律
也是装载镜头和诗歌的壮锦
承载着江浦往事
以及日新月异的江北新区
Xiangshan Lake, Jiangpu
What luck, to have this mirror—
one that catches Bulao Village mid-transformation
and all the years Jiangpu has weathered.
Every dawn and dusk, it takes in
residents streaming here, wave after wave,
on pilgrimage.
It takes in the love in Bulao Village
that never grows old;
the cultural promenade through Xiangshan Lake Park
and the Xiangshan promenade;
the swell of morning swimmers，
the breath of distance runners.
Along the lakeside road,
willows sway lines of verse.
Birdsong and the scent of blossoms
wind through dawnlight into a poem.
Xiangshan Lake is a mirror.
It holds at bay
the roar and pulse of city traffic;
it is also a tapestry
that gathers the camera’s gaze and the poet’s line,
carrying Jiangpu’s past
alongside the Jiangbei New Area
as it takes shape by the day.
梧桐叶正黄
或许有一天，我也会离开生活了多年的南京城，到别的地方虚耗一年四季。但我相信，无论走到哪里，只要秋风起时，我都会想起南京的梧桐大道，想起南京金色的秋天，和在法桐树下捡起黄叶当书签的我。那些温暖的片段也会像梧桐叶一样，堆积成思念的温暖，供我在冬天里温暖自己。
今秋梧桐叶正黄，老伴不懂秋的故事，在法桐树下漫步的我好想能遇到一个同频的人，互相述说自己的故事，一起享受那份宁静与美好。虽说秋天不会为我永驻，我却愿意在金色的阳光下、捡起一片黄叶，写下那刻的心情。
Under the Plane Trees
Perhaps one day I too will leave Nanjing, the city where I have lived for so many years, and let the four seasons slip away somewhere else. Still, I believe this: wherever I go, when autumn winds rise, I will remember Nanjing’s Wutong Avenue, Nanjing turning gold in autumn, and the self I was beneath a plane tree, picking up a yellow leaf for a bookmark. Those warm fragments will gather like fallen plane tree leaves into a warmth made of longing—enough to see me through winter.
This autumn, the plane tree leaves are turning gold. My partner has no ear for the stories autumn tells. Walking beneath the plane trees, I long to meet someone on my wavelength, so we could trade stories and share in the quiet and beauty. Autumn will not linger for me. Even so, I want to pick up a yellow leaf in the gold light and write down what I feel at that moment.
Ⅲ. Between Shifts · 间隙
Why Wu Xia writes: a giant billboard overhead, a cramped room within, and the hours left over after work. She has been writing for more than thirty years, and here she writes about writing itself.
我写诗
我写诗
从月光中撷取太阳的热度
在小雨扣窗的音符里提炼爱的乐章
从岁月的眼角里采集着人生的精华
在巨大的广告牌下把渺小的心事收集
我写诗
扬洒着四季的灵动
在生命的背景里记录花开时的天籁
用心灵收集翅膀上摇落的露珠
编织五彩缤纷的童话
花开鸟鸣鱼游的律动中
分享着感悟出人生的真谛
夜的心事
也许扩张了眼袋的阵地
伏案的疲惫里尽管弯曲了背脊
顺着灵魂的瘦骨蘸着生活的百味
延续铺排着心里面的那份臆想的美丽
夜深了
窗外的路灯都打盹了
邻居的梦呓开始清晰
指尖依然在键盘上放纵骚动的心灵
把诗歌的翎羽调匀
诗歌的碎片勾勒出一个倦态的笑脸
天亮了
我的诗还在难产
夜晚的哭泣还在咀嚼 深化
看着对视了一夜的屏幕
春天的心事
我们一起疯狂了最后的标点
I Write Poems
I write poems,
plucking the sun’s heat from moonlight,
distilling love’s music
from drizzle tapping notes on the pane.
At the corner of time’s eye
I gather the marrow of life;
beneath a towering billboard,
I collect my small, private cares.
I write poems,
letting the four seasons loose,
recording the unheard music
of flowers as they open
against life’s backdrop.
My heart catches drops of dew
shaken from a wing
and weaves them into fairy tales
threaded with color.
In the pulse of bloom and birdsong,
in the flick of swimming fish,
I share my glimpse
of what life might mean.
The night’s thoughts, perhaps,
have annexed more ground beneath my eyes.
Bent over the desk,
fatigue bows my back.
Still, the lean bone of my soul is my pen.
I dip it into every taste of life
and keep laying out
the beauty I invent within.
Night deepens.
Even the streetlights nod off.
My neighbor’s words in sleep come clear.
Still my fingertips roam the keyboard,
letting the restless heart run loose.
I comb the poem’s feathers smooth;
its fragments sketch
a smile worn thin by the night.
Dawn.
My poem still labors to be born.
I keep chewing over the night’s cry,
letting it deepen.
I look at the screen
that has stared back all night.
Spring’s secret thoughts.
Together, we drive
the final mark mad.
生命的温度
生命在有限的递减中，最终会凝结为虚无的句号。爱是世界永恒的主题，也是我活下去的理由，我不想让爱我的人和我爱的人失望，只能好好活，努力上进，生命不止写作不歇。渺小的我只要理想的火焰还在燃烧，生命的温度必将洞穿世界所有的寒凉。
Life’s Warmth
Life is finite. It dwindles until at last it congeals into nothing: a full stop.
Love is the world’s enduring theme and the reason I go on living. I cannot let down those who love me or those I love. So I have no choice but to live as well as I can and keep moving forward. As long as life goes on, the writing goes on.
Small as I am, with the flame of my ideals still lit, life’s warmth will cut through all the cold this world can hold.