Chang Fang-tsu/ 張芳慈
Chang Fang-tzu(b. 1964) is a teacher of arts and humanities in an elementary school. She joined “Li Poetry Society” in 1986 and founded “Whale poetess society” together with a number of poetesses in 1998. Her Hakka poem “The Flat” was performed in “Halo Dance Theater” in 2003. She hosted a project of " Hakka ladies write history” in 2004, acted as the curator of “The Eyes of Poets” and launched at the poetry festival of National Taiwan University in 2010. She won “Wu Chou Liu Poetry Award” in 1992. She has published the books of poetry including “ The Deviant” and “Red Swirl”.
E-mail:mavies0513@yahoo.com.tw
I Know You Have Been Here / 我知道你來過英譯
The sunlight breaks through
Surrounding the clouds in crevice
The tender leaves embrace the strength
Determined to extend to an encouraging path
In the wind and the rain
The spectacle changes its countenance
Lightly
Delicately
For those ever grew and stretched
I know you have been here
The small tree in my heart
Nourished by the death in yesterday
Let the shed today to its content
Until all is deprived by time
Only the deeply entangled roots remained
Not only Fudafudak, the Beautiful Sand / 不只是美麗灣
Not only Fudafudak, the Beautiful Sand
What they want is their scheme
They always say
They want to exploit the wasteland
They always bear the saying
And bring the document we don’t understand
Tell us that we’ll have jobs afterwards
They won’t say
The many hectares of hills and forests
The lots acres of fertile lands
Dividing into the level grounds as they desired
How much is the price of each level ground?
They change the land category at will
After buying-out and levy
The wasteland they called
Are truly the big land that ancestors never forsake
When the stone masonry wall collapsed which were built by generations
When the people can’t find their way home
The spectacle of sea and mountain are destroyed
Can only leave our emotion in the wandering bag
They always say
Your children will have the jobs
Will be affluent for a vacation to see the sea
But we only see the groups of young people
At the brink of city
Align to receive a shredded dream
Remarks: Fudafudak, a place name, it means “The Beautiful Sand”,
locates at Taitung, Taiwan.
A Winter Afternoon of a Country / 國家冬日的午後
Szymborska read a verse about brute
”…..Ranked first the clear conscience
Out of the light
Enter into the shed of a city”
There is entrance of desire in all directions
Insisting their path when no way out
The public bus 262 with a featuring of amusing hunger
Writing conspicuously the released inferno
The five stars flag hang quietly in the street
Forwarding ”The Independent Taiwan” as a country in west gate plaza
The banner of Taiwan is prohibited from hanging so as in Asia Series
The uncollected one at the bridge end will become rag
Indifferent the country continues its nonsense diplomacy
Someone intends his historical positioning by passing the Cross Strait
Service Trade Agreement and establishment of nuclear plant
For those have been departed from the car window
Both sides of the straits wear the neon underclothes in dusk
Swaying the rising price every night
They are otherwise catchy for their unashamed conscience