Image courtesy of Nichalos Walton-Healy.
Translations from Master’s Return Journey: The Fields in Auvers — An Interpretation
of 120 Paintings by Van Gogh
Prologue
For one who pulls someone’s
Chestnuts out of the fire, he does not easily voice
His pain, hidden at heart
And whose company does the mad sun at Arles keep
By burning thirty seven times?
How can one draw gold threads
From the broken souls?
All my life, Van Gogh
Is the only one I love as I love his way of turning the world
Into a burning sunflower
序 诗
一个从火中
取栗的人，他不会轻易说出来
那些藏在心中的伤痛
而一颗阿尔的，疯太阳
伴谁：燃烧了三十七次
那些从破损的灵魂里面
怎样才能抽出的金丝线
我一生之中
只热爱凡高，只热爱他把世界
旋转成燃烧的向日葵
Ouyang Yu is an award-winning poet, novelist and translator. His first novel,
The Eastern Slope Chronicle, won the 2004 South Australian Festival Award for Innovation in Writing. His third novel,
The English Class, won the 2011 NSW Premier's Award, and his 14th collection of poetry,
Terminally Poetic (2020), won the Judith Wright Calanthe Award for a Poetry Book in the 2021 Queensland Literary Awards. Recent works include the novels
All the Rivers Run South (Puncher and Wattmann, 2003) and
The Sun at Eight or Nine (Puncher and Wattmann, 2025), and the collection of short stories
The White Cockatoo Flower (Transit Lounge 2024).
Geng Xiang is a Chinese poet from Yongshou, Shanxi, now based in Xi’an. A member of the Chinese Writers’ Association as well as a leading member of Chinese Poetry Society, he has published eight collections of poetry and essays, including
At the Back of Xi’an, Gathering Copper from the People, The Chang’an Book and
The Lamp on the Land. He has been awarded the Lao She Award for Essays, the Bing Xin Award for Essays and the Poetry Monthly Annual Award.
