LatinosUSA

Retracing the Tang Poetry Road

Where they ended is where I begin.
The source hides in the unseen glacier.
Darkness from there unfolds gradually
into clarity. To begin is not to continue.
Perhaps there is nothing worth saving.
I and they dwell in different silences.
Only those who dare to be silent together can see each other.
It is too late for me to live like others.
Allow me to coexist yet remain free.
To be in the world yet not belong to it—how arduous this I,s
and what an honorable inhuman duty.
All was predetermined, before I existed
in the unattainable source and eternity.
Thus I say: poetry is negation.
It is always on the opposite side, the gaze of the departed.
Whoever can bear the weight of its silence
will be able to give birth to their own father,
and retrieve his voice in the vanishing of all things.

~~

Evening, the Kindness of Things Astonishes

Evening, the kindness of things astonishes,
you try to understand, but they always withdraw,
steaming, reassembling themselves.
What happens in between, you’ll never know,
things stubbornly insist on their surfaces
a smooth lid, a basket of anxious eggs.
Will it be pried open by a jealous child
like the pot lid in my rural cousin’s parlor
revealing food of the gods, golden little cakes?
Or Tsvetaeva’s poetry, though
the pot where she hid her poems
remains beyond your imagination,
as does the cruelty of man.
Did it have a lid, too? Faces under artificial light,
kites tilting gently on rising steam, nodding faintly.
This is an ordinary evening,
yet there is a suspicious scent of betrayal,
a zone of transition, like a layover.
Neither praise nor prayer comes easy.
The weather is set, along with all unrequited suffering.
No one will call your name, tinged with an accent.
No one will rush you, because flight is canceled, crowds disperse like mercury.
You’re stranded in the sudden hollow cold of the terminal,
trying to understand your predicament and void’s essence.
A young creator has emerged with his beauty unwarned,
dragging his invisible crowd along the endless boarding bridge.

~~

The End of the Journey

The journey ended beneath a tall, nameless tree.
It stood alone on a small hillock
with nothing around it—not a single other tree,
nor the four legendary rivers, nor any other hills.

The tree was towering; no one could tell what kind it was.
It seemed to have stood there for years, yet showed no signs of decay.
There were no fruits on the tree,
none of the twelve distinct kinds that change with each passing month,
nor any hollow in its trunk that led to an underground palace waiting to be explored.

We circled the tree time and again, tapping and knocking
measuring its girth, beyond the ordinary soil
mixed with gravel, beyond the green grass carpeting the hillside’s gentle slope,
There was nothing at all, yet no one doubted this was the destination of our journey.

With nothing left to do, some began to mark out boundaries.
Others plowed trenches and raised a garden,
encircling the tree within its bounds, crisscrossing paths wound through the garden.
Its walls glistened with the sheen of jade, adorned with thornless roses.

All manner of trees were planted around it, each in its proper place.
Buildings for every purpose rose among them—there was even a tavern,
a marketplace, a babble of tongues, fabrics patterned in countless designs.
Gradually, the tree faded from our sight.

Only occasionally, when a gust of wind sighed through its leaves
as if an invisible giant serpent were coiling upward toward the darkness at the treetop,
years slipped by, and we finally forgot our once-pursued journey.
The tree, too, vanished into the thickening forest that now surrounded it.

~~

A Poem for March

Fog on the window pane blurs into nameless grimaces.
On sunny afternoons, you daze by the window,
lingering long on the edge of a thought,
Fooling yourself you could live forever.

Days stretch longer, nights lie quiet and vast.
Often, a sudden sorrow seizes you deep in the night,
as if some fragments of yourself have wandered off for good,
a single twig plucked silently from the bird’s nest.

Dusk remains a bitter threshold to cross.
In the shift of light, shards of thought
flicker into view then vanish again.
You pace from one window to another,
watching lamplights bloom in other people’s homes.

The parasol trees have not yet unfurled their green to veil the panes.
Graves in the mountain have caved in, filled with rainwater,
then dried up, quickly smoothed over by sprouting grass.

And in the wind-scoured north,
the earth glimmers with a damp sheen.
You are that first twig, cautiously yet confidently
laid upon the bare boughs of a tree by a bird.

~~

Dusk Descends

Dusk descends, the sun’s dazzling golden glow
rings with the twang of copper wires, strands of hair, and harp strings.
On the hillside, the hue of trees deepens,
rows of houses shrink
like an advancing battalion halting, quiet as tombs.

A tractor lies hidden, all alone,
in the tall sea of green crops—
a grasshopper that’s lost everything but its head,
dusted over with dirt and lime.

The Harmony bullet train, like two
mating bugs with their tails locked tight,
maintains a calm passion as it speeds along,
its belly teeming with wriggling human-shaped eggs.

The earth—yes, the earth is vast.
The setting sun blazes, mellow and crimson,
slips away swiftly, unhurried.
The lives of others, on the verge of nightfall,
the golden autumn currents in the air,
and the mountain ranges, fading farther and farther into the distance.