For all those reason, I long for a nomadic life, but I do not persist in throwing off all happiness present blindly. I advocate that in pursuit of much more happiness, the sparkling point of human personality and the true essence of art, one has to give up something.
(6)
I’m a travelling scholar in a foreign city.
A city with a crisscross network of rivers and lakes.
A city where rain may fall tomorrow.
I worry, for I’m homesick.
I miss the virgin on the waterwheel half a century ago.
I miss the whole bunch of flowers on pagoda trees uncountable.
I’m a travelling scholar in a foreign city.
A city with a crisscross network of rivers and lakes.
A city where rain may fall tomorrow.
By the door gazing with eagerness is my mother afar.
My feeling deep in my heart now is like heavenly stars.
Zhang Yong
Dec.22nd, 1997
China University of Geosciences
1998年1月6日
星期二。晴。
今天是口语考试，考试结束后，Mason交给我一封信，我很感动，他对我那篇诗论的英文译稿作了回复，而且连译稿中最细微的拼写错误都做了修改：
Dear Jordan
Thank you for your explanation. I could make many comments, and wish above all to say that I am impressed by your dedication to poetry. I find your English verse promising, and I am astonished by your accuracy in using the language. I am a reasonably well-read person, but in no way a poetry expert.
Your mental feeling is described by the philosophical/psychological word ‘angst’. If part of your personal project is to understand English poetry, then the time you are devoting to improving your listening and speaking is essential. One of our books contains a very hostile essay by a Chinese students criticizing a poem Do not go gentle into that dark night by the modern poet Dylan Thomas. The student’s observations about the poem’s weaknesses of philosophical content and formal structure are accurate, but he has failed to grasp that the poem sounds magnificent, and its phrases ring in my head.
To be a poet is as difficult in Britain as it is in China , but for different reasons. Have a good Spring festival Holiday , and we shall talk further when you return.
Good wishes in the Year of the Tiger!
Roger
Tiger, tiger, burning bright
In the forest of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dared frame thy fearful symmetry?
