木樓 — Wood Building
I wrote the below last night and forgot to post.
今日為冬末，
明朝是春分。
交替兩年景，
愁煞木樓人。
Cantonese:
Gàm yaht wàih dùng muht,
mìhng jiù sìh chèun fahn (fàn?).
Gaàu tai léuhng nìhn gíng,
sàuh saat Muhk Làuh yàhn.
Mandarin:
Jīn rì wéi dōng mò,
míng zhāo shì chūn fèn (fēn?).
Jiāo tí liǎng nián jǐng,
chóu shà Mù Lóu rén.
Today is winter’s last,
bright morning shall bring Spring.
Trading two years’ circumstances,
worry brings an end to a person in Wood Building.
(I’m just beginning to learn Chinese. Corrections are welcome.)
I haven’t posted much over the past month. One of my best friends, Emily, has been in town for an unexpectedly (and wonderfully) long stay, and this weekend the third member of our old stomping trio, Hillary, has come to town for the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival. Old friends and Gillian Welch take precedence over blogging any day. (Unfortunately, because of work and complete and utter brokeness, I missed the Be Good Tanyas, this morning, and am missing Dolly Parton right now.) I’ve got five entries in the works, but haven’t had the time to finsih them. However, this was too exciting for me to wait:
The California Parks Department and a non-profit foundation are attempting to restore the Immigration Station on Angel Island which detained 175,000 would-be Chinese immigrants between 1910 and 1940. This was the tail end of one of the more distressing periods in the history of San Francisco race relations. While imprisoned in Wood House on Island (as the poets called their prison and its location), many internees wrote poetry onto the walls — in brush, in pencil, or by scratching the characters in. The poem translated above is one such. I believe that it’s a gǔsì (古詩) — anyone who really knows Chinese know?
For thirty years, these poems were mostly forgotten. Then, in 1970, park ranger Alexander Weiss realised that the walls of the detention barrack held Chinese characters. Most of what had been written was illegible, but between photographs taken of the walls in 1970, and notes taken in 1931 and 1932 by internees, nearly 140 poems were salvaged. These have been collected and translated in the book Island: Poetry and History of Chinese Immigrants on Angel Island, 1910-1940 by Him Mark Lai, Genny Lim, and Judy Yung. I stumbled upon this book in Aardvark used bookstore a few weeks ago, and have been reading a poem here and there for Chinese study, but have been holding back on reading the whole thing through until I can afford a trip to Angel Island.
As we come up on the fiftieth anniversary of the Six Galleries reading of Allen Ginsberg’s Howl (this Friday, eight pm — I’ll be at 3119 Fillmore, Howl in hand; any San Franciscans reading this are welcome to join me), and we celebrate the wild boys of the Beat moment and the San Francisco Renaissance, who dragged themselves through our ‘negro streets’, it’s worth keeping in mind that this city and this country have other poetic histories that shouldn’t be forgotten again.