A Hua
translated by Xuelan Su

Back to Issue 3.3

Winds Blow Through This Floating World

what’s not flawed or doesn’t breathe life 
can’t be trusted 
the weeds, these floating bits of dust  
a crippled ant 
prologue to the vast, lonely spring 

and there’s trickling streams, small rivers  
chickens and ducks, livestock, and the lone sparrow  
perched on a power line… 
as soon as it rains, it will fly-off in a panic to some distant place
 
only the wind is calm 
only the wind whispers among the holly and spruce
weary, it rests by the road, and 

untroubled by far off fears or immediate woes 
it’s like the green vines last spring  
supple and pied 
half-lit, half shadowed by time 

let me get through this spring 
the leaves are calling 

sadness has just lifted… the wind still blows

Original Chinese poem from Cattails © 2016 Shandong Publishing House of Literature and  Art Co., Ltd.

A Hua (阿华), born Wang Xiaohua  (王晓华), is from Weihai, Shandong province, northern China. Her poetry has appeared in The People’s Literature 《人民文学》, Poetry Magazine《诗刊》, Mountain Flowers《山花》, Flying Apsaras《飞天》 and October《十月》, as well as in various poetry anthologies. A Hua has several collections of her own, published through Shandong Publishing House of Literature and Art Co., Ltd., among which are Cattails (香蒲记 © 2016), and What Makes My Heart Swell (给我辽阔的 © 2021). A Hua participated in Poetry Magazine’s  25th Youth Poetry Conference, is a student of the 31st Advanced Research Class of the Lun Xun Academy and a contract writer for the Shandong Writers’ Association.

Xuelan Su (苏雪兰) is a Chinese literary translator living in Seattle, Washington, USA. Her translations of A Hua are published in Alchemy - A Journal of Translation, and will appear in Lunch Ticket later in 2025. Xuelan’s work, with co-translator Ziying Fan ((范紫盈), has been published in The Northwest Linguist, LIT Magazine, Book of Matches, Rhino, and in Boundless, 2024 and 2025, an anthology of the Rio Grande Valley Poetry Festival finalists. As well, Xuelan and Ziying’s translation of A Hua’s poem, “Blooming Like Flowers, Full Like the Moon" (花好月圆), was long-listed in the 2023 Stephen Spender International Poetry-in-Translation Contest.