Zhong Fang's poems can be seen to be positively influenced by some masters such as Mandelstam and contemporary poets such as Duoduo, but the originality of the individual is more obvious. I think he wrote well, and although there is an inevitable sympathy factor for the living for the dead, especially the early deceased, at work, I believe that if Huang Sheng had not told me about Zhong Fang's origins, I would still have liked him equally and recommended his poems, and the difference may only be that I do not add any additional words.
- Huang Canran
Wonderful selection
Spring days
Someday you will understand
My sweet seeds will cover the earth
The soil will become pure because of me
I know there will be no rain or snow in the future
A new spring will ripen on the tip of my heart
Morning of February 6, 2014
Save
I'm sure I can still pack up a spring
My bile will dye the land green
My kidneys will become the new wetland
I will return to the strange world
February 7, 2014
Return
I came from this narrow corridor
Walk into my tomorrow
A trance dragged me down
There is always a kind of luck
Follow, slowly
It's been around for a long time
I heard complaints from the human world again
Deflected and straight
I took a gentle step and stepped on the thick white earth of heaven
November 14, 2015
I'm going to be like you think
I'm going to be like you think
Turn into autumn and praise loneliness in the humid air
Pursue hummingbirds along the coastline
Find the sweetness that lives in the roots of the earth
Love, grow wings in the form of an angel
Rise to the blue sky and transform into a cross
Indicated in the sound of pain
A paradise of happiness
A teardrop, with sadness and joy
Out of thin air
I'm going to be like you think
It becomes autumn, it becomes a piece
Slowly falling maple leaves
September 4, 2014
Hope
I believe more and more in the afterlife
Maybe many things in this life are a foregone conclusion
I couldn't touch my arteries, he had
Tenaciously jumped for four years, painkillers
The smell was still spreading on one of the blood vessels of the tongue
In the next life, I will be a human being and remember my name
Remember the lights of the big city and the moment
A silence that is difficult to express
I'll look for a prairie
Be a long-term neighbor with animals
Forget the language and all the complicated thoughts
I look forward to reincarnation more and more
Suddenly disappears like an artery
I don't know anyone, and I don't know the world
January 10, 2016
Editor's Epilogue
Text/Kun bird
On the morning of October 5, 2016, Zhong Fang died, suddenly suffered a pulmonary infarction during dialysis, and died at the age of 27. The afternoon before, we had also talked on the phone and said we would see him again in two days. The next day, when I lifted the bell to release the body, I felt so light, which made me angry. It was his second hospitalization that year, his new kidney was gone, and he had to undergo dialysis twice a week.
I think that even if the kidney source is difficult to find now, that is, by dialysis, he can persist for 20 years (Zhong Fang himself prayed in the poem, give him another 10 years), and then I will definitely see a completed Bell Fang.
A finished bell must be a figure of light and glory, whether it is poetry or being a person, I have always thought so. Done? How disgusting is this, has there ever been an unfinished fate in the world? Never. Man is man, and man dies prematurely.
I often think back to Zhong Fang's voice at that time, and I have been speculating about what he looked like when he became old, and within the scope of what I can see with the naked eye, the image that can correspond to him should be Billy Wilder's lawyer Wilfred in "Prosecution Witness".
I feel that he is just like Zhong Fang in old age, still trying his best to satisfy his hobbies, even if these hobbies will obviously damage his health, but he is bright, frank, and clinging to justice. At that time, Zhong Fang will also have the composure and wit of an old lawyer.
I love Zhong Fang because he has the goodness and purity that I can't cultivate in my life, and he lives so uniformly, so absolutely, so bravely, so unspeakably trusted and respected.
Zhong Fang's death once made me inexplicably angry, for the malice he suffered when he was alive, the malice of fate. Zhong Fang loves almost everything in this world, even when he hates something, he carries the power of absolute love. I could always feel the absoluteness in his soul, the tolerance that transcended ordinary people, the psychological capacity and the understanding of others, and the tendency to spray them all out in an instant.
For Zhong Fang himself, this was terrible. Because the enduring mind always carries the most straw, when it cannot carry the last one, it completely collapses. People always see that Zhong Fang has a seizure, an unprovoked seizure, no, you have hurt him for too long, you hurt him because you feel that he does not understand that it is a harm, so pour out your hurt more brazenly. In fact, he understands everything, he looks at the fire, but he doesn't care.
Once, he was too short of friends, because of his body, his stupidity, his extreme thirst for things that were too pure and too easy to blaspheme. The world arranged all kinds of people to hurt him, by poisoning the things he cherished most—friendship, love, loyalty, integrity,— and Zhong Fang had been suffering for such things.
It's so hard to make friends, and the hardest part is when you want to make friends with someone's soul. Whoever is the first to naked his soul will be the first to crash into the filth of human nature, men's and women's.
It's a vicious circle, and the more friends you have, the more desperately you are looking for friends, friends of the soul. For people other than Zhong Fang, I can see the disability of their souls, and only Zhong Fang's soul is complete. Why is the price of soul fulfillment death?
Zhong Fang ignored this, and I said that he liked "a man who sits on a knife with his ass". People always say, "Don't kidnap the world with your purity." "Yes, we were wrong, it's not our world, it's theirs.
In logic, the bell is put to death, many times. The sense of destruction is also addictive, I have experienced that thing, but Zhong Fang should have experienced it several times more than I did.
In retrospect, I was not good for Zhong Fang either, knowing only harshly, even ferociously, demanding that he change, destroy his angelic traits and his complacent attachment to them, for these had caused him to suffer too much.
I told him that if you don't want someone to hurt your purity, you have to be afraid, and those people will become your true friends because you are as pure as a sword, and your purity will be appreciated and embraced because it is also a sword. I am already the devil, am I not malicious, am I not wantonly enjoying the pleasure of the tongue? I kept repenting to the Spirit of Heaven that Zhong Fang had put on for the rest of my life, until I had a desire to repent.
Zhong Fang and I met because of poetry, at that time he was eagerly looking for a fellow traveler, and I had the impression that Zhong Fang was always so eager to seek something, love, friendship, faith, poetry is his faith. It seems to be the Wanshou Road subway station, in the winter of 2012, a fat man with a long scarf hanging around his neck, waiting for Huang Sheng, who came from Shanghai with me.
Huang Sheng did not introduce much beforehand, nor did I read the poem written by Zhong Fang, but after arriving at my house, Zhong Fang recited a poem, which shocked me at once. The breath of his poems, the biting words and rhythms of the recitation, and his ease of mind all amazed me. Since that night, we have been friends.
At that time, although he had been writing poetry for nearly 10 years, Zhong Fang's writing was still in the relatively simple romantic tradition, and even to some extent classical. He uses rhymes very freely, breath through, catchy, but sometimes because of too much emphasis on rhymes and lose the precision of expression, but also seems a little old-fashioned.
He was the kind of poet who had been encouraged in literature since childhood, but had not been guided enough, so he kept writing like that, without much development, but there was real gold in the background. I reluctantly did my way back to the big brother, but to be honest, I don't even know how deep and shallow I am, just a few years older, I was a person in 1981, Zhong Fang was a person in 1989.
At that time I was self-righteous and proposed that he establish formal and spiritual self-consciousness, read and write together all day. He brought me endless joy, and in front of him, I felt like I was being opened up, not becoming a better person, but becoming more and more like myself. No matter how cold your heart is, the bell can melt you.
Later, he gathered many friends one after another and founded a poetry organization called "Attic", with Zhong Fang as the editor-in-chief. Because, as far as I know, no one is more selfless than he is, willing to sacrifice everything for a common goal. The "attic" is a node, from the formation to the later operation and maintenance, the war between the absoluteness of human nature and the soul has not stopped, and the absoluteness of the soul has failed perfectly.
Brothers belong to brothers, poetry to poetry. Zhong Fang's poems, I don't want to talk too much (thinking of Zhong Fang, I think of his people, really want to talk about poetry, it may be a few years, need to clean up too many inner clutter), so as not to have lovers and poetry suspicion, just talk about it briefly.
Zhong Fang's works always present a state of complete openness to the world, and now, this is rare, even in a cursed sentence, you can see his desire to embrace the world; in his voice, there is no slightest twist, it is straight to the expression, and there is his own understanding, which is something that is still rough and grasped by life. But they are also very beautiful, and that beauty is unique to the soul.
Zhong Fang cherished his poems, but did not develop the habit of sorting out his own works, he always wrote the poems on paper and put them into a pile. He liked the material forms of existence of poetry. Although three poems had been published before his death, when compiling this collection, Zhong Fang and I's family could not find electronic documents, and could only re-enter them, only the last few years of poetry, left in the WeChat circle of friends.
There are inevitably personal standards for selecting poems, but I try to put in as many of his more mature poems from various periods as possible, and I hope that the bells you read here are complete.
Selected Poems of Zhong Fang
The bell is pending
Shanghai Literature and Art Publishing House
Shanghai Literature and Art Publishing House
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