Author: 柯柏榮/Pek-êng Koa
Translator: C. J. Anderson-Wu
The wind glides gently across the lake’s heart
Ripples limp farther and farther away
The rain sings its song
Desolate, desolately
Fingers slice across the water
Through those vows that only skimmed its surface
The lake caresses me, and
I caresses memory
Can I still feel
The warmth of the fingerprint you left behind?
〈指紋〉
風輕輕仔划過湖心
水泱一uainnh一uainnh遠去
雨唱歌的聲
淒涼仔淒涼
指頭仔liô過湖面
Liô過彼寡搵豆油的咒誓
湖水咧摸我
我咧摸記持
敢摸會著你留落來的
指紋的溫度
Old
Restless as the wind, my poems are
Unable to fend off the smuggling of time
A few rough lines carelessly strung together
And longing spills over, swallowing the night
A few strokes of sorrow etched as crow’s-feet
More mottled than the salt-worn scars
Of sea wind on a wall
I step into the coffin of dreams
Where the colors turn ashen-gray
And I hear
Stories disappearing one by one
Lives cracking open scene by scene
I crouch in the humble gutter
Trying to tear loose from the dark bindings
But blooming wind and snowy moonlight
Split me in two
So let this be a thin, famished poem
Where breath feeds light between the fissures of age
But with head down, rushing forward along the way
I recklessly lost the light
Sleepyness shrinks back
And the sky breaks into morning
〈老〉
我的詩鬱卒若風
擋袂牢歲月的偷渡
凊彩鬥兩句仔粗粗的詩句
滿墘的數念隨共暗暝崁落
皂幾撇仔憂愁的魚尾紋
就比海風吹過的壁痕
閣較必破
行入夢的靈柩
夢色殕殕霧霧
我聽著
一層一層拍毋見的故事
一齣一齣必裂的人生
我跔佇卑微的洩水溝
數想翸開暗烏的綑縛
煞去予風花予雪月
破作兩爿
按呢就寫一首消瘦的詩
予喘氣佇歲數的敆縫飼光
只是頭犁犁拚勢趕路
無細膩共光拍無去
睏神一勼水
天就光矣
AUTHOR: Pek-êng Koa is a celebrated Taiwanese poet and advocate for writing in the Taiwanese language. His life and work are deeply shaped by his 17-year incarceration, following two convictions for robbery. It was during this long period of confinement that Koa began to study and write poetry in Taiwanese—a language that had been politically suppressed for decades. Throughout his literary career, Koa won 37 literature awards.
TRANSLATOR: C. J. Anderson-Wu is an award-winning Taiwanese writer, who has published three collections of fiction. Her latest work is Endangered Youth—Taiwan, Hong Kong, Ukraine(2025).
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