When You're Old
By Bai Hua
Urine grooves eucalyptus in the past, wooden bed in my junior high school time,
the semen in the dead of winter in 1971 that more than once I wrote about，
so many rivers deeper and vigorous and unnamed rushed through my body!
But everything slow and slow from then on, life and death, this pair of
mysterious treasures, and Walt Whitman may had cracked it.
The children have lost patience with it, anyway, please forgive them.
The wind was blowing! In North Dakar, in an autumn grand banquet,
that German just accepted farewells unexpected without deliberation,
but a Chinese man suddenly stood up, with tears from his eyes.
When you get old and talk to me and touch on Senegal, over there,
shopping people, man and woman, always with childhood happiness;
the afraid to die will realize that only immortality is dangerous yet.
Feb. 8, 2014/ translated by Chen Zihong
诗人简介：柏桦（1956-）中国当代著名诗人，西南交通大学艺术与传播学院教授。代表作《表达》、《往事》、《水绘仙侣》、《一点墨》
本诗英文译文及所附中文原诗已获作者授权，未经原作者和译者许可，谢绝任何转载及用于任何商业用途。
当你老了
柏桦
往昔的桉树尿槽，我初中时代的木床，
我不止一次写到1971年隆冬的精液呀
我体内奔腾过多少埋名勃发的深河！
后来一切都太慢了，生与死，这一对
神秘的珍宝，惠特曼或许已破解了它。
孩子们对它失去了耐心，请原谅他们。
风乍起！达喀尔北部，一个秋日晚宴，
那德国人刚接受了大家无意中的告别，
有个中国人突然站起来，流下了眼泪。
当你老了又对我谈起塞内加尔，那里，
逛街人无论男女总有一种童年的快乐；
而怕死人终将明白只有不死才是危险。
2014年2年8日
