A Visit

This poem is an English translation selected from the first section, "A Visit" (巡礼), of the Chinese poetry journal Workers' Poetry Selection (《打工诗选刊》).

The Night Owl

Midnight, 1 AM, 2 AM, 3 AM...
Counting seconds and minutes, one by one.
The hour hand moves so slowly,
I start to doubt it’s stopped entirely.
The night stretches so long —
No matter how I endure, dawn refuses to break.

I am the one who watches the night sky
till the last star fades from sight,
finally, the darkness lifts its curtain.
Beside me, a constant gulu, gulu sound rises —
it taunts my sleeplessness.

The road narrows into an alley with no way forward,
forcing me to turn back.
Truth is, all our lives
we wait to be healed,
yet the cure remains ever out of reach.

Wang Guiqin, pen name Yuhe (Rain Lotus), is a female farmer poet born in 1967 in Panjin City, Liaoning Province. She is a member of the Liaoning Provincial Writers Association and the Panjin Municipal Writers Association. She has published two personal poetry collections: Where Reed Catkins Fly, Homesickness Rises and Snow Cannot Smother the Pain of the World, as well as a selected prose collection titled Selected Prose of Wang Guiqin. Her works have been featured in various provincial and municipal publications as well as online platforms.

《熬夜者》

0点，1点，2点，3点……细细数着秒针和分针

时针转速那么慢

让我怀疑它已停止摆动，夜这么长

怎么熬，天都不亮

我是数着夜空

隐去最后一颗星星的人，天终于撤去黑幕

听着身边不断传来“咕噜“”咕噜”的声音

它勾起了我的失眠症

路走到了窄巷，不得不回返

其实，一个人一生

都在等待被治愈，却总是苦无良方

王桂芹，笔名雨荷，女，农民。1967年生，辽宁省盘锦市人。系辽宁省作家协会会员、盘锦市作家协会会员。著有个人诗集两本，《芦花飘处起乡愁》《雪捂不住人间的疼痛》，著有个人散文集一本《王桂芹散文精选》，作品曾发表在省市级各种刊物和网络平台上。