Yuan Hongri’s most recent poem to appear here was “Home Sweet Home Beyond Milky Way” (August 2018).

Day and Night in Kingdom of Heaven
By Yuan Hongri
Translation by Manu Mangattu

Last night, gazing at the stars
I saw those countless gems smile
Numberless from my past life
Limitless in the silver kingdom
Sprang from the light of thought
Forging ahead to superluminal chi
Five hundred years later, or, may I say
After a thousand five hundred years of the world
I saw a giant of a spacecraft
The eyes of those men and women
Were tranquil, serene as a diamond
Then I knew, once and forever: On the new planet,
In the Kingdom of Heaven, there is neither day nor night.