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Best Poems Written by Runping Chen

Below are the all-time best Runping Chen poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

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The Old Camphor Tree In My Memory

Author: Runping Chen

The desk sends forth its particular fragrance
That gladden people’s hearts.
That is the sweet-smelling of the old camphor bodies
And into the impression of my childhood immerses.

The shade extended my fellow villagers’ strolling;
Countless summer nights embraced people’s joyful cooling.
The huge and tabescent trunk held up
The wind and frost for generations’ living.

The refreshing breeze was kissing the head of the tree.
Kindly pulled the old camphor closer
Some strands of cooking smokes
Vaguer and vaguer.

The production teams’ whistles were resounding over the village,
And grownups shouldered the sun and moon
Hurrying to the hills and fields 
While the old camphor collected the children’s imaginative yields.

--In its chest
The childhoods would not be lonely and flurried 
Counting from the stitches of leaves
Thousands and thousands of suns.

Many rivers of time were flowing around;
With no sense of time, the sadness I’ve known.
Since I was away, many shifts of the sunrise and sunset 
I came back home and found the old camphor fallen on the ground.

It’s lying on the ground with no voice and sound,
Being dying and breathing
The merely last fragrance of its life
In front of the horrible carpenters who circled around.

The carpenters held their stainless saws
Ignoring the old camphor’s itches and aches.
On its shoulder was an owl
With the mouth open, and family ruined after all.

Prizing up the mouth for no use of vomiting sadness,
The birds sang no songs any more in the sky
Because they could hardly find back 
Houses and household articles among the green leaves.

Children carried in both hands the remains of the old camphor’s bones,
Hating to pile them in the firewood house.
When the setting sun was sliding down the west hill ridges, 
I walked back and forth around the old camphor tree.

Details | Runping Chen Poem

Confession

Confession
  
    Author: Runping Chen 

From the peak of soul
I carry a handful of clean soil;
From the rapids of life
I scoop up a ladle of clear water,
And mix them up together.
I searched and fetched the bricks of affection
To build up a kitchen range.
I burn my life as igniting the firewood
To heat the pot of faith
So as to stew leisurely
Gurgles of the poetic thinking,
In silence.

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The Landscape At the Distance

Occasionally in a yard,
You were the focused scene
Library, high wall, green tree and lawn included,
As the spaceless view.
I desired to shoot this landscape
But the shutter of emotions
Missed that very moment.
In my heart, you became 
The blank film.
I should have taken a photograph of it again
However I lost its focal length.
The changed landscape
Far away
Turned into
A poetic distance.

Details | Runping Chen Poem

The Movement From the Rice Fields

If you have never seen it,
How could you hear the song here;
If you have recited the poem "To Commiserate Farmers,
There will be more understandings shining in the night sky;
The movement composed with sweats rippled along the rice ear waves

The hot July or August suns were grilling the ground
As flames flipping their notes all around. 
Farming folk songs were sung loudly from the straw hats,
Combined with the rumbles of the threshers,
Meanwhile golden grains piled mountainous heights.

Look! The moon and stars came along with 
The sun hanging on.
From dawn to dusk, they were embracing the tanned back.
When didn’t they play the live keys
For the sound hopes in the waters and soils?

Listen! Can it be regarded as resonant songs?
With thy eyes taking a photograph of 
The golden farm of rice,
And patting at our stomach,
A movement for the rice fields, shouldn’t we compose?

Note: The poem "To Commiserate Farmers" is a well-known poem written by Li Shen, a famous Chinese poet in Tang Dynasty, which shows the poet’s sympathy on the poor farmers’ working and living.

Details | Runping Chen Poem

Leaving For a Distant Place

Author: Runping Chen

In his mother’s eyes,
The child is dragging her coat brim;
On father’s broad shoulders,
I am still weak and young.
Today, the swallows are trying a fly
While I am also about to leave home.

At the entrance to the village, the bus is moving ahead.
Mother’s tears shedding like threads fastened the child’ heels.
Exhorting me a hundred thousand times  
How could she exert a full heart of worries on and on,
However far and near, just as beyond the horizon.

The wrinkles on father’s forehead
Were crowded with drastic heartbeats
And he saw the child stepping forward
The weak and puny footprints.
Perhaps walking on and on alone,
The child might understand the hardships that life trecked on.

Birds will fly high and deer will run fast.
This long journey is on my life course the first.
To rouse the young wings
So as to be firm and proud
And to say farewell to many years of shield
While I’m trying to fly, to a distant sky.

Mother, wipe off thy tears, please.
And tell father to wait for the swallows’ return;
Don’t walk back and forth at the entrance of the village
Where the cypress tree is in the direction of my homing passage.
I will stretch my wings that have gradually become browny
And perch on your life eventually.

Details | Runping Chen Poem

Today Is Mid-Autumn Festival

Author: Runping Chen

Here is the noisy lodging house
Where I cannot compose a poem in reply to Dongpo’s Prelude to Water Melody
Because whoever can hardly
Bear the accumulated homesickness.
I sang loudly
In a melancholy.

In an avulsion, my voice
Sang to the top of my bent.
The tacit moon, 
crude and rash like that, 
Wouldn’t realize
Her radiance gave a burn to the man away home.

Would you like some moon cake, my friends?
No! I’d rather go outside
And have a bite of the moon.
Therein I might relish that taste.
I wanted to throw my mind up into the starry sky
And swim in the limpid moonlight.

The cool breeze raised the brows of the clouds.
My heart was even brighter than the Mid-autumn moon’s eye 
While however I opened my heart I couldn’t see my hometown
A both ancient and young sadness of parting,
Always classical 
And refreshing now and forever. 


Note:
Prelude to Water Melody is the Ci poem written by the famous poet Su Dongpo in the Mid-Autumn Festival of 1076 (the Song Dynasty). It takes moon, full and crescent, as the symbol to describe the reunions and separations, joys and sorrows of people’s life.

Details | Runping Chen Poem

A Way Station

Author: Runping Chen

Here arrived the strange way station
And the train was like a long snake,
Leaning on the small platform. The dawn was at the scene
While I was silently standing on the strange place,
Just as a lonely star on the night screen.

The wind from the platform
Drove me away into the waiting hall.
The poor building fled away from the night darkness
With the half-waking lights, its winking eyes
Which looked at the old clock on the south wall.

The night was bantering 
The travellers’ drowsiness laid on the benches.
The leaving people’s heartbeats hurried the clock pendulum
While the staying ones having been snoring
But me seated on the bench and shivering

Several stars stitched to the roaring train
And flew away
As if it cut through the sky screen
From whose rupture the noisy was gushing—
Washing faces; giving a lift; serving you dinner or breakfast noodles.

I struggled to keep up my spirit
Just like the morning star in the east sky
Nervously peeping around 
At a few lumps of burning clouds on the grey screen
When the stories at the way station were again on show in sunshine.

Details | Runping Chen Poem

A Gloomy Mood

Author: Runping Chen

Gazing at the yellowish walls around
I kept myself at the corner of the room.
Although I intended to disgorge 
All the skein of ashy sorrow in my mind,
Within the restrain of predicament  
I heard nobody’s voice outside

Hardly can I find the track of light
And neither can I knock at the door of my heart.
Outside the window, door, and house,
Everywhere the glinting brilliance is. 
The morning sun is baptized by the morning glow
While in the haze the gloomy mood is moving to and fro.

Details | Runping Chen Poem

Starting School Education

Author: Runping Chen

It’s just September 1st of that year.
Flowers in the school garden are waving beautifully.
The young children were cheering and started their school ages
While pulling mother’s coat brim
And having never explored the secret on pages.

I was like a lamb
And erected my ears for listening to the teachers;
I opened my eyes and looked around
The colorful school garden
Where the dream about seas of knowledge was.

I haven’t seen where the knowledge was
And knew little about how to appreciate;
However I felt comfortable from head to foot,
And entirely free from worry, I finally entered
Yesterday’s dream of hill-like books.

Details | Runping Chen Poem

To Travel With Raindrops

Author:  Runping Chen 

From the heavy clouds scurried the feet of rain,
On the heads of trees they stepped.
I hid myself under my umbrella 
But the raindrops never dodged.

My journey,
The part of the muddy and rugged
Came upon the open and clear rain
At the fork of wind.

I was like the palest raindrops
As if we met in the sky sometimes.
We walked side by side and then found
Poetry was my belief hereby on the muddy road.

The heartfelt wishes were pattering,
And emerged wet the past of my life.
The elegant hairs of rain dotted with splashes
Then were looking for the soul of Muse.

We traveled at double speed
While the raindrops chanting and
Blowing on my umbrella excited
Sprinkled piles of poetic lines.