What Is the Firmament Hiding?
On the Central Shaanxi Plain
Dusk arrives too early in Luofu Town
Before mists evanesce upon the northern Qin Mountains
Lights have studded the nearby villages
While the desolate wind whistles in Funan Village
The clover in my palm is hesitant to fade its dark green
The two camphor trees by the river stand in silence
Lonelily waiting for the curtain of stars to fall
As the twilight mellows
Everything has merged into the darkness and found their return
In the wilderness some silhouettes wandering back and forth
Flit through my empty innermost heart
As if a pair of hands were grabbing me by my ears
Making me listen carefully
When I look around the surrounding country
A drizzle comes unexpectedly
Luofu Town which I haven’t seen for years
But have to bid adieu for now
Has resolutely transformed into a black spot in the evening wilds
*
This poem was first published in Meetinghouse Volume 5. The image is “Crow Speaks from the Shadows” by Jane Zich, also published in the same volume.
Wang Qi, author of five full-length poetry collections, is a member of China Writers Association, writer-in-residence at Xi’an University, Shaanxi One Hundred Young Talents, and the 1st and 2nd Shaanxi One Hundred Outstanding Young and Middle-Aged Writers Support Project as well as Director of the Poetry Committee of Xi’an Writers Association. For a decade, he was the Deputy Editor-in-Chief of Yan River (second semimonthly), one of the oldest and most famous literary journals in Northwestern China, and he has won more than sixty national and provincial awards and honors. His poetry has been included in nearly a hundred anthologies in China. This is his first publication in the English world.
Chen Du is a voting member of the American Translators Association and an expert member of the Translators Association of China with a master’s degree in Biophysics from Roswell Park Cancer Institute, SUNY at Buffalo and a master’s degree in Radio Physics from the Chinese Academy of Sciences. In the United States and a few other Western countries, she has published 160+ pieces of English translations, poems, and essays in more than fifty literary journals. Yan An’s poetry book, A Naturalist’s Manor, translated by her and Xisheng Chen was published by Chax Press and shortlisted (one of four titles) for the 2022 Lucien Stryk Asian Translation Prize, administered by the American Literary Translators Association. Yan An’s poetry collection Rock Arrangement which was co-translated by her and Xisheng Chen was a runner-up for Carnegie Mellon University Press’s 2025 Literary Translation Prize and will be published in fall 2026.
Xisheng Chen is a Chinese American linguist, lexicologist, ESL grammarian, translator, and educator with over four decades of professional translation experience. He was the top scorer in English in the National College Entrance Examination of Jiangsu Province and earned both his BA and MA from Fudan University, Shanghai. He also holds a Mandarin Healthcare Interpreter Certificate from City College of San Francisco. His professional career has included work as a translator for Shanghai Television Station’s Evening English News Program, lecturer at Jiangnan University in Wuxi, China, and adjunct professor in the Departments of English and Social Sciences at Trine University (formerly Tri-State University) in Angola, Indiana. Over the course of his career, Chen has published numerous translations across a wide range of fields in newspapers and academic journals in China and internationally. He currently works at Tesla in Fremont, California and also as a freelance translator for JTG Inc., contributing to translation projects for the United States Department of Justice.