Foxes keep showing up. Their voice contains a baby crying at night.
Behind the fence of my high school dorm, a group of domesticated foxes
used to be chained together like dogs.
Their pointy faces often flashed across our windows.
When I got up during the night and heard their screams, I’d know midnight had passed.
In those three years, the foxes were an alarm clock, a call to put out the fire.
We had a monocular to watch their increasingly bright fur and the stars on it.
We had a German recorder. They gathered together with shaking hair, resembling a lake.
Sometimes their sounds would merge into a pinnacle. You breathed, the foxes breathed.
The damned foxes! Like suona on Sunday, you said.
But what animal should the fox be? Did the fence acquiesce in an extinction?
The monosyllabic, foamy sounds seemed to have come to an end in a snap?
Three years later, the place the fox vanished was crowded with chicks, waiting to grow up.
狐狸
狐狸总会浮现，它的声音里有婴儿啼哭的夜晚。
我高中宿舍围墙的后面，一群被饲育的狐狸，
像狗一样让锁链拴在一起，
尖尖的脸在我们房间的玻璃窗上闪现。
夜里起身，听见几声狐狸的叫喊，就知道时间已经过了午夜。
然而，那三年的时间，狐狸就是报时器，就是等着去灭火的喊声。
我们有一个单筒望远镜，用来观看日益明亮的皮毛和它们上面的星星。
我们有一个德国的录音机。它们聚在一起，毛发抖动，像是一个湖。
有时它们的喊声会连成一个尖顶，你呼吸，狐狸，呼吸。
该死的狐狸，像星期天的单枝唢呐，你们说。
但那应是一个什么样的动物？围墙在默许一个枯竭吗？
像是单音节的，泡沫的，和啪嗒一声的即刻终止？
三年过后狐狸消失的地方，已遍是等着长大的雏鸡。
Zhang Weidong 
, born in 1979 in Heilongjiang, is a professor of Chinese literature at Ningbo University. He is an award-winning poet and the author of four poetry collections.