“As a poet, I am always lost,” poet Bei Dao once said. Born in Beijing in 1949 just two months before the official establishment of the People’s Republic of China, the poet has witnessed many cycles of political tumult and dislocation in his lifetime, culminating in his own exile from and eventual return to his homeland. Sidetracks, his new book-length poem that has been eleven years in the making, documents his wandering and reminiscences through nearly four decades of exile in thirty-four hazy, dreamlike cantos. 

Riffing on classical Chinese poetic traditions and interpolating Buddhist scripture and Beat poetry, Sidetracks mimics the dislocation of exile in its very structure, with abrupt transitions and sudden, unexpected juxtapositions between decades and continents. Sprawling, lyrical, and often ambiguous, the cantos follow the poet’s journeys through history and memory, chronicling the many divergent paths his life has taken, including his recollections of the Cultural Revolution; his friendships with Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder, and Eliot Weinberger and their forays into Buddhist teachings and practice; and his recovery from a debilitating stroke. In one poem, Allen Ginsberg teaches him to meditate on a sidewalk in Seoul; in another, he returns to Beijing for the first time in thirteen years and finds his country—and himself—utterly changed (“the century cracks / and the mother tongue has deepened my foreignness”).

While much of his work conveys a fierce sense of political urgency (as he writes, “revolt gives poetry an inexhaustible locomotive”), in recent years this urgency has become physical as well. In 2012 Bei Dao suffered a stroke that inhibited his ability to speak and write, causing him to shelve the project as his daughter taught him his native tongue with beginners’ flashcards. Three years later he began writing again, “stumbling along, wobbling like a rusty pendulum, searching for that innate, inner compulsion.” This experience, combined with his experience living in Hong Kong during the COVID-19 pandemic, caused him to become more acutely aware of the Buddhist concept of anitya, or impermanence—“that what encompasses life and energy, along with the creative faculties, could be cut short or recede at any moment.” This attunement to impermanence lends Sidetracks a thrumming vibrancy, as Bei Dao seeks new language to convey what cannot be expressed—and what might be taken away at any moment.

–Sarah Fleming

XXXIII.

as if the steelyard’s landing stage suddenly tilted       pleasure boats
disperse       a ruckus of birds       the loudspeaker of the sun has been
amplified       the shady boulevard keeps up with the god of death
hail a taxi from another world       emergency fire exit sign       white
angels wearing large masks float like clouds       follow the corridor
to the end of the world order       what is your name       abducted by
the translucent devilfish

endless night       lift the weight of the language stone       waking up
to an ice rink on the ceiling       the two clowns who mime the days
chase each other       sounds of home lie fat on the distant haystack
a herd of horses breaks through death’s fenceline      I text my teach-
ing assistant—garbled signs       babble babble       blubble burble
I begin to learn Chinese all over again       my daughter teaches me
with learn-to-read flash cards       working through many common
grade school grammatical mistakes

the speech-language pathologist’s assessment is correct       I’m
really ready to deliver pizza      on the heels of the madman who
steps on the musical scale       a flash of sunlight—I stop writing
the little trail of the zipper exposes the back of night       waiting to
be whipped by the Master of Memory       the emperor stamps
the imperial jade seal at the end of the long scroll of mountains
and rivers

nebular ink dots on rice paper—in accord with the cosmos       paint-
ing pictures makes me euphoric       ink dots cluster disperse
depending on the flow of random scattering       forest beyond the
borders of language       good fortune depends on disaster / disaster
conceals good fortune       I am aimless freedom       listening
closely to the whispers of snowflakes guarding the vortex of day
and night at the center of the mysterious river

crossing the national borders of illness from Hong Kong to Nan-
ning       the hands of the ancestors feel my pulse       including
Zhang Zhongjing of Nanyang       physician’s prescription       book
of healing herbs and stone needles for cold and warmth       measure
the depths of the sickness       I lie on my side becoming a mountain
range       chase the flame-bright hooves of the horses on the plains
needle and moxa each complement the other       the nine planets
rotate in the hands of the magician of the Da       dialectics is really
the truth of illness

turning back to the shore       the ceaseless spindrift like an elegiac
song       recharge through the meridians       learn from the grand-
father of dusk and the moon’s waxing and waning—I play chess
with the god of death       dawn embarks from the train station
the buffer overloaded with language grinds and screeches       yang
qi-energy rises with a murmur from the ravine       the forgotten
forest has reined in the wind
mountain chains and ocean waves       enter the dangerous jour-
ney of the dream       tree roots argue underground       juicy
pomegranates explode       poisonous mushrooms denounce
praises to heaven       the master uses the strings of the qin to
pluck the turbulent world       as the flies of wicked thoughts
spiral overhead       I sit in meditation

♦

“XXXIII,” by Bei Dao, translated by Jeffrey Yang, from Sidetracks, copyright © 2022, 2023 by Zhao Zhenkai. Translation copyright © 2024 by Jeffrey Yang. Used by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.