Meeting Stonecutters at a Station

Meeting Stonecutters at a Station

By Zou Jingzhi

Translated by Hannah Lund

They are calm, worn

witnessing others on the platform bid farewell --

Blessed, for they need not reach out

to touch expendable things.

In the quarry they know

that to split a boulder, other than

time, they must join the world

and strain with slow strength.

I’m not one of them,

this designation mysterious as fortune-telling.

It’s like a man chosen to be a god:

Some spend lifetimes before their images lighting candles.

在车站碰到采石工人

作家：邹静之

他们平静，褴褛

在站台上目睹别人的告别……

他们幸福，不必伸出手

碰多余的东西

在采石场，他们熟知

破开巨石的技艺，除了

时间，他们要与世界

拼最笨拙的力气

我不是他们中的一员

这种分配占卜一样神秘

正像有人被选作了上帝

有些人一生在为神像点灯

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Jingzhi Zou is a Beijing writer, born in 1952, who has been writing poetry since the 1980s. In the 1990s, he wrote for television and movies, influencing a broad audience. His future writing projects will mainly focus on theatrical pieces, with five plays, four operas and others in the works.

Hannah Lund is an American writer and Chinese-English translator. She is a master's candidate in Comparative Literature and World Literature at Zhejiang University, and is a founder of the Hangzhou Writer's Association. She is working on translations and adaptations of Chinese ghost stories, as well as her own poetry.