The Gorko Gazette

Daily Humor

thegorkogazette

10.24.2025 7:01 AM

Journey on Frost’s Descent by Ma Yongbo

Journey on Frost’s Descent

Another stop on the journey, now a strange and crumbling city:
red-brick chimneys and weathervanes crown its ancient roofs.
A river coils like “a belt of beauty and enchantment” around
its slackened belly. Stone tablets once pledged to patron gods
now lie dismantled, paving reflective streets with faded carvings.
Gardens and stone chambers tier down the hillside.
We tether impatient horses to poplars outside the walls—
their nostrils puffing white breath, steam rising from their backs.
Deep in the sky, colossal wheels, pivots, gears, and hinges
no longer grind with urgent clamor. The machinery finally rights itself.
Only a few streets remain, running parallel, linked by winds.
Few souls linger. Occasionally, laborers in gardens straighten
to gaze at glints from higher peaks across the river, or at nothing—
resembling those philosophizing farmers we met in Rome’s outskirts.
Dim taverns crouch low, half-basements with slanted windows.
Cheap tequila reeks of rotting cactus. No one we seek is here;
no one seems to await us. Hot winds from the desert, robes edged
in gold, faint rumors—even the patterns on our sword hilts blur daily.
Slowly, we forget each other’s names. Hometowns, journey’s purpose—
only frost on armor remains, vanishing at sunrise, leaving dampness.
No orders, no maps. The gleam on cup rims mirrors the cunning eyes
of village girls. Perhaps settling here, when all is done, nothing
closer to life’s essence than tilling soil, sowing seeds, grafting trees,
watching grass seeds tumble in waves. Great energy surges formlessly
beneath our feet. What roots and sprouts can or cannot achieve—
and why—haunts us. Here, all things sing in one voice
what they do not comprehend. Perhaps this too is our riddle.
Everywhere, goblets of varied materials gleam, gathering sensations
into their sparkle. Names etched on lead pipes once belonged
to a man in salons, his face warped by ceaseless thought—
human sorrows no longer plague him. We don’t know whom to find,
what message to bring or receive. Long forgotten are departure’s orders,
likely another failure’s ramblings in a swaying basket.
Only endless mountains, rivers, frost, long roads, and storms remain.
Since turning back offers no hope, nor can we halt anywhere—

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Ma Yongbo was born in 1964, Ph.D, representative of Chinese avant-garde poetry, and a leading scholar in Anglo-American poetry. He is the founder of polyphonic writing and objectified poetics. He is also the first translator to introduce British and American postmodern poetry into Chinese.

He has published over eighty original works and translations since 1986 included 9 poetry collections.He focused on translating and teaching Anglo-American poetry and prose including the work of Dickinson, Whitman, Stevens, Pound, Amy Lowell,Williams, Ashbery and Rosanna Warren. His translation of Moby Dick has sold over 600,000 copies. The Collected Poems of Ma Yongbo (four volumes, Eastern Publishing Centre, 2024) comprising 1178 poems, celebrate 40 years of writing poetry.