Autumn Grapes
by Bing Hua
Translation by Yingcai Xu
Your autumn
Is vibrant with a bumper harvest
Your autumn
Is permeated with fruit fragrance over the streets
quill and parchmen
Can hardly reap your harvest
Or enter your streets
My autumn
Is lonely
I
Water and fertilize it all alone
I
Have stumbled into it
After autumn officially arrives
I collect bunches and bunches of purple-red grapes
And taste them
None has your flavor
Those tearful and sweaty grapes
Are not at all sour
They are instead fragrant, succulent, and crystalline
Previously published in quill and parchment, October 2023