What Sparks Poetry is a serialized feature that explores experiences and ideas that spark the writing of new poems. In the newest series, Life in Public, we ask our editors to examine how poetry speaks to different aspects of public experience. Each Monday's delivery brings you the poem and an excerpt from the essay.  
Bei Dao
Translated from the Chinese by Clayton Eshleman & Lucas Klein
Contempt is the passport of the contemptible,
gravitas is the epitaph of the grave,
see, in this aureate sky,
the drifting, bent reflections of the dead.

They say that the glacial era has passed,
why then is ice everywhere?
The Cape of Good Hope has been sighted,
why do a thousand ships still clash on the Dead Sea?

I have come into this world
bringing only paper, cord, and shadow,
to defend before the trial
those voices that have been judged:

I tell you, world,
I—do—not—believe!
Be there a thousand challengers underfoot,
count me as number one thousand and one.

I do not believe the sky is blue,
I do not believe the thunder's echoes,
I do not believe that dreams falsify,
I do not believe in death without retribution.

If the sea is doomed to smash the embankments
let all the brack dump into my heart;
if dry land is doomed to rise
let all humanity claim a new summit.

A new turn for the better with twinkling stars
is being stitched into the unbarricaded sky—
it is an ideogram five thousand years old,
staring eyes, the people of tomorrow.
from the book ENDURE / Black Widow Press
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Cover of Bei Dao's book, Endure
"[O]nce a poem is out in the world, there’s no way to predict the different uses, appropriations, misappropriations, readings and anti-readings to which it might be put, nor the places and times where it might emerge, uncanny, as if with fresh meaning.  Bei Dao’s 'The Reply' ('Huídá,' sometimes also translated as 'Answer') is one such poem, with an intense career all its own.”
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The poet Steve Dalachinsky performing with the bassist Barre Phillips

"A 2016 article about him in The Villager quoted him as saying both 'I don’t even like being called a poet' and 'Let’s put it this way: I’m a poet.' 'Steve didn’t want to be pigeonholed in any way,' his wife, Yuko Otomo, said by email, 'although towards the end of his life he realized he wasn’t good at anything but writing poetry.'”

via THE NEW YORK TIMES
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