John.B.Lee (约翰.李)：博然特佛德(Brantford)市的永久桂冠诗人。两次获得加拿大国家电台文学大奖，唯一一位两次人民诗歌奖获奖诗人，著有五十多本书， 获得70多个全球奖项，500多篇著作发表，无数次担任评委，编辑等。约翰很喜欢中国古典诗歌，他的诗很多本土化，描写安省南部地区的田园生活，向往一种自然和谐的美，但又富有深深的惆怅。
我认识约翰是在2005年 Ted Plantos 纪念奖，他作为评委给我颁奖。同时他应安省诗歌协会会长Bunny.Iskov的邀请给我的诗集写了诗评。选用他的这首来翻译，是因为我很喜欢这里的朴素和自然，同时又可以从小我中看到历史自然的迁徙。
Being Human
By John.B.Lee
I am reading Rumi
reading Tu Fu
and thinking of being human
last summer
Marty and I
slept in the farmhouse loft
under French heaven near Vitteaux
and we lay in our separate cots
like boys at camp
laughing, talking silly
making fun of everyone
we were mostly ourselves, middle aged men
with the window open
to starlight
and the evening breath of the fields
look up at the slant of ceiling
the slant of beams
this room was built
for dreaming
and we were giddy as lads
with happy lives, not
old Tu Fu, his sadness settled
like shadows, like rivers
like cold stones of winter
and the bitter darkness of long nights
and the lonesome insomnia
of small hours
like the mystical beauty of death and dying
and the inescapable anger of the soul
our hearts refusing the silence
with a lovely slowing exhalation
as we each become
more pensive in
the loosening limbs of slumber
relaxing our hands like unfurled leaves
and pressing our faces to linen
meanwhile great rivers of the earth
the Tigris and Euphrates
the Yangtze
the Amazon of my father’s last days
flow on
and what would I buy
from the famous floating markets of Bangkok
I would purchase the rains of remember
I would purchase the stars of recall
and what to preserve in a poem
but the drenching of darkness with light. .