Penjara Tak Mampu Menambat Kata-Kata

*Kredit foto: Google

Liu Xiaobo, penyair dan pengkritik sastra adalah penerima Hadiah Nobel Keamanan 2010. Ketika ura-ura pengiktirafan itu bertiup dulu, Liu ditangkap (bukan untuk pertama kali) dan dipenjarakan. Hari ini dia sepatutnya berada di Oslo, Norway untuk menerima hadiah berkenaan. Isterinya turut ditahan, dan ahli keluarga terdekat lainnya tidak dibenarkan untuk keluar dari China untuk mewakili Liu dan menerima hadiah itu bagi pihaknya. Di sini saya muatkan sebuah sajak Liu, 'Penjara Tak Mampu Menambat Kata-Kata' yang diterjemahkan oleh Jeffrey Yang dan diterbitkan oleh New York Times dua hari lalu.


Words a Cell Can’t Hold
from “Experiencing Death”

I had imagined being there beneath sunlight
with the procession of martyrs
using just the one thin bone
to uphold a true conviction
And yet, the heavenly void
will not plate the sacrificed in gold
A pack of wolves well-fed full of corpses
celebrate in the warm noon air
aflood with joy

Faraway place
I’ve exiled my life to
this place without sun
to flee the era of Christ’s birth
I cannot face the blinding vision on the cross
From a wisp of smoke to a little heap of ash
I’ve drained the drink of the martyrs, sense spring’s
about to break into the brocade-brilliance of myriad flowers

Deep in the night, empty road
I’m biking home
I stop at a cigarette stand
A car follows me, crashes over my bicycle
some enormous brutes seize me
I’m handcuffed eyes covered mouth gagged
thrown into a prison van heading nowhere

A blink, a trembling instant passes
to a flash of awareness: I’m still alive
On Central Television News
my name’s changed to “arrested black hand”
though those nameless white bones of the dead
still stand in the forgetting
I lift up high up the self-invented lie
tell everyone how I’ve experienced death
so that “black hand” becomes a hero’s medal of honor

Even if I know
death’s a mysterious unknown
being alive, there’s no way to experience death
and once dead
cannot experience death again
yet I’m still
hovering within death
a hovering in drowning
Countless nights behind iron-barred windows
and the graves beneath starlight
have exposed my nightmares

Besides a lie
I own nothing