MasticadoresUsa // Editor: Barbara Leonhard //“when we discover time”: A Collaboration by Helen Pletts and Ma Yongbo
Photo by Israyosoy S. on Pexels.comwhen we discover time当我们发现时间时
she is a red envelope full of white moths
in their stirred white dust, the phone torch
drives them into the beam. Black is rising
and the red envelope in shrinking.
Sunscapes cross, Harbin attaches gold to the clouds
opening a pearl shell,
while the red envelope is starting to seal
her edges, gold spreads his iridescence.
The moon has to choose who to visit
in the photos the poetess can not find her,
so the moon must be with the poet.
When she finally appears, she is a sliver of gold shell,
hovering until the red closes.
31st July 2025
By Helen Pletts 海伦·普莱茨
Translated by Ma Yongbo 马永波
当我们发现时间时
when we discover time
她是个装满白蛾的红包
在它们扬起的白色粉尘中，手机电筒
将它们驱入光束。黑暗在蔓延
红包在收缩。
日景交错，哈尔滨给云朵镀上金边
打开一枚珍珠贝，而红包
开始封住边缘，金色铺开虹彩。
月亮得选择去拜访谁
女诗人在照片里找不到她，
所以月亮一定和诗人在一起。
当她最终出现，她成了金贝壳的一条裂片，
盘旋着，直到红色合拢。
2025年7月31日海伦·普莱茨
Copyright © 2026 Helen Pletts and Ma Yongbo
All Rights Reserved
Ma Yongbo was born in 1964, holds a Ph.D., is a representative of Chinese avant-garde poetry, and is a leading scholar of Anglo-American poetry. He is the founder of polyphonic writing and objectified poetics. He is also the first translator to introduce British and American postmodern poetry into Chinese.
He has published over eighty original works and translations since 1986, including 10 of his own poetry collections. He focused on translating and teaching Anglo-American poetry and prose, including the work of Dickinson, Whitman, Stevens, Pound, Amy Lowell, Williams, and Ashbery. He has published a complete translation of Moby Dick, which has sold over 600,000 copies. The Collected Poems of Ma Yongbo (four volumes, Eastern Publishing Centre, 2024), comprising 1178 poems, celebrates 40 years of writing poetry.
Helen Pletts 海伦·普莱茨 www.helenpletts.com is the English co-translator of Chinese poet Ma Yongbo, who is her official Chinese translator. She is a member of the CB1 Poetry committee, the monthly poetry reading event held in Cambridge. Her work is translated into Chinese, Bangla, Greek, Vietnamese, Serbian, Korean, Arabic, Italian, Albanian, and Romanian. Helen and Ma Yongbo are joint creators of the Volumes of the ongoing ‘Ma Yongbo Poetry Road Trip – Summer Tour 2025’, for International Times.IT. The first bilingual poetry book of Helen Pletts and Ma Yongbo, ‘Night Shining-White,’ is to be published in 2026 by Open Shutter Press.
Her poetry has five shortlistings for the Bridport Poetry Prize (2018, 2019, 2022, 2023, 2024), two longlistings for The Rialto Nature & Place Prize (2018, 2022), a longlisting for the Ginkgo Prize (2019), a longlisting for the National Poetry Competition (2022), 2nd Prize in the Plaza Prose Poetry Competition (2022-23), and a shortlisting for the Plaza Prose Poetry Competition (2023-24).
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