安魂曲

Requiem

 

       老友王逸兄中英文俱佳，文史之外，我们还有许多共同爱好，比如古典音乐和西方绘画，但这两个领域，王逸兄的造诣比我深多了。他对俄罗斯文化的热爱和理解，更令我望尘莫及，有机会听过他几次讲演，尤其是谈托尔斯泰和《克莱彩奏鸣曲》那一次，内容丰富，精彩之极，听者获益良多。疫情早期，形势严峻，忧闷之余，耽读杜甫，写了八首《安魂曲》。王逸兄读过，觉得甚有同感，于是不吝心力，译为英文。虽然多年前上学时为了学分，也抱着字典拼凑过十几首“英文诗”，但和王逸兄纯正圆润的英文相比，真是相去不可以道里计了。原诗之前已贴过，可以参考。第八首开头所引的两句，出自韩愈的《柳侯罗池庙碑》：“待侯不来兮，不知我悲。千秋万岁兮，侯无我违。”

 

 

Translated by Frank Wang

 

One

 

Your joyful face disappears in the darkness

As if the sudden burst of ice

A planet gradually escapes from our vision

Your smile and silver hair

is a flower tree before midsummer comes?

Waving your hands abruptly

A tyrant’s unruly gesture is just the same

Clear is the noon time

as random as rocks

So kind and so warm with pride as it is

 

But the world quickly lost its voice

Yours

Also ours 

Wild geese perched on a sand oasis

Dew poured down with no regret 

Moonlight and frost

Paint the night white

 

Thus, the day becomes our drag

Becomes the appendix of evolutionary forgetting

Intentionally

Unnecessarily

Create pains at any time

 

Thus, slowly those brilliant ranks went down the ridge

Rainbow for clothes and wind for horses

So much with grace

Floating passed the palaces of Saga and Sagas

So praised the ground into a diamond

Cloud chariots

An immortal who looks like a lassie

Is sent down slowly to us

 

Yet, is this a sure praise?

Children sucking fingers

Dreaming of sweets or nameless monsters

Were brushed by the messy streamer

As well as brushed by the unicorn on the high teeth

Marvel at the unseen colors and patterns

Growing is their own deep respects  

 

Only the onlookers are still alive as in the past

Hidden is the dry season in the earth

Another kind of life and

another kind of death

There is no need to breathe

And every time you leave

No need to say goodbye

Because you are saying goodbye always

 

Rain keeps coming down

But your hat is never wet

 

Your thin shirt

Your empty hands

You are born lame or due to some reasons

Yet, your teeth are still neat

You are waiting for blind eyes

in the rain

alone.

 

That is because the wisdom solidified in the stupidity of praises

The sound is drowned in

The clearest and sweetest water in the world

Fish eat rotten aquatic plants

Coral turns ivory white

Blossom is the flower from water-chestnuts

In an ancient form worth of tracing memories

Despite imitation or illusion

Thousands of tadpoles lost in the crevasses of spring streams

That is the text that someone has dreamed of, always.

 

February 10, 2020

 

Two

 

Grim Reaper is waiting for us in mid-air at all the times

With dazzling sunlight

He pierces the eyes of the beholders

Drinking from the same glass of wine with no end

He cheers around elves

 

You, on the firm ground,

Should not have fears

But you, drifted with the waves or lurked in the abyss,

Please continue your longevity rituals    

 

Missed direction does not hinder the blind

So as deception does not bother idiots

People who lost weight

Won't be lost in the deepest pit

They will rise up by their own nature

Just by that nature

They learn elegant language and graceful steps.

 

People who won’t wake early

Will wake up at noon time

In the smoke of a dark fire and incenses

They will see a dawning world

And then start their morning prayers

 

Thus, when the bell sound falls

Everything becomes merely shadows

The mountains weakened with their wildly dancing wings

Let the animals that crying for return

Walk away with a stagger or with a gracefulness   

Soaring up is the building which

Instantly inserts itself into the sky full of clouds.

 

So, as always

Grim Reaper is waiting for us in mid-air at all the times

In a long, long falling

A feast begins

Oceans hug oceans

Tightly holding each other are tiger's hands and monkey's

 

February 11, 2020

 

Three

 

If the flowers are kept by their seeds

Generations of pines

Should stubbornly face the same direction

Islands play with fish

Sunk and resurfaced

If all in good qualities

All will live forever because of seeds

In the wind and frost of thousands of generations

Expanding and refined with no end

Thus death is nothing more than

A sigh after long work

Some short breathes in dreams

Or a brief rest in an endless journey--

We take off our hat

With peeking eagles facing the wind of sand 

Drink a bag of spirits

Toss some gossips

 

If all gestures

Warm the texture like jade

Soft and silky smooth

Gathered human sympathy for thousands of years

Calm our minds

If it is cultivated in decades

One man's purity and serenity

Never flattering but kindness

Slowly, it’s the fragrance overflowing over the dark water

If that can make spring and autumn

Shapes and colors

Or be scattered in bamboo hedges and huts

Or cover the endless fields

Then, in front of windows it will leave shadows of dawn

With a kitten

Or a horse sleeping head down

If begonia can live forever

Then, for the exile wondering in mountains full of peaches and plums

Let the petals touch their bamboo sticks

Even if snow and stone

Had already carried too much meanings

But they remain novel and mysterious, still

Then, death is just nothing more than

The breeze blowing over the fish eyes

A hint of drooping ash of incenses

When the geese flew over the Dayu Peak  

Encountering and crushing a dewdrop

If the bones in the moonlight

Only wet the eyes of a fugitive

A thousand years ago

In the death of millions  

 

If even death

Also can be a scam—

 

April 2, 2020

 

Four

 

Destiny and death will always reach us

From invisible to tangible ways

Like water forming ice

Not necessarily, once it begins there will be an end.

Some endings do not need to start

And also the beginning is unnecessarily the beginning

Like believing in all the seeds, we look for clues in antecedents

Is ridiculous

Facing a vast history

Isn’t it also frivolous?

What must arrive

Eventually will arrive

In the moment we do not expect

Or as endless disillusions left us being terrified

Panic for nothing left

Even though lacking of memory saved us many times

 

But isn’t it that forgetfulness

Our most fundamental worries

If everything is forgotten

We are no longer alive

We become fragmented

A clay puppet with no decoration of colors for live

Then, everything will be washed away

Even some things once hard and extremely crystalized

All will be melted into dirty snow

Before and after of choosing between birth and death

Seasonal flowers will roar to come

What an intoxication and enlightenment

Even those who betrayed the seasons

Still is a child of the seasons

Because they cannot refuse to comply

Cannot refuse to betray as well

They cannot get rid of the meetings with things so infinite

Some kind of maintenance 

Perhaps the only one

Determines the orders

And reasons for existence

 

April 22, 2020

 

Five

 

A fine man’s death

Saddened me beyond words can express

Even the one who I never met

With a photo

Seeing through his clear eyes and

Kind face

Even a good person in fictional stories

Some are true

Some are just ideal sustenance

Or a metaphor, a symbol

Still makes me cry

Too many ancient saints had died

In the future will have more

Perceived or impossible to expect

As long as it's a good person

Death is the pain in our hearts

Pain, we may not understand

It still hurts us

Still makes us vulnerable

Some of the losses we are unwilling to imagine:

The loss of a noble soul

Is the one that nothing can make it up

A sorrow, forever

Thus, no one ever knows

Such a beautiful miracle had existed in the world, once.

 

Six

 

Shotgun and eloquent

Once made the lion a symbol of distress and frivolousness

From the sewer, they protruded their hairy heads

Creeping in the streets before dawn

Every inch of track they pass

All with rusty stains

Defiling the world that is touched by faith

In a ridiculous way, they are sure to dispel

Or destroy this era of interdependence

Thus, their death then,

is the liberation from suspicion.  

Almost as if a fate

is so decent,

for no reason and no change—

Teeth reduced to victorious loot

Tail was burnt with gravel

Paws are nailed to the wall like a splendid show

All is like a notorious name was imposed

 

 

The wind of April in every year  

cuts across the bright fields like sharp blades

Sound of the bird breaks down glass

Piece by piece

Overwhelming avalanche

As if the sky was torn

Reveals a more realistic sky behind the stars

Eyes embedded in the barren hills

Dive into the world like a fantasy kaleidoscope

There, the sound and smell of copper

The sound and smell of lapis lazuli

The sound and smell of beetles

Let clarinet permeate the sound and smell of autumn forest

The sound and smell of guitars and harps

Even the sound and smell of salt and sulfur

Curled up in endless slow movements

Waiting for the same pause like silent death

 

But there is no fire and no water

There is no daily sunrise and sunset

 

Have we ever imagined the lion's submission and difficulties?

Moving forward is going back to childhood

Ascent is to sink into hell

For humble existence, they don’t understand

Promise is as shameless

Dedication is as hypocritical

Rhetoric is like doing everything

Long distance deception and self-deception

We can't follow those brilliant words

As if we couldn't catch our own eyes

 

Death insults all humble people

Apart from death, there is no other insult

Thus, insult is always as modest as death

Arcade leading to the sea

With onion-shaped domes scattered

But the sunset can hardly bear its own landing

In its swollen eyes

Over filled with prayers

Like a beaded chain on the wrist and ankle of a female dancer

This moment

Shotgun smoke and eloquent fragrance

Form the actual shape, perhaps

It is no longer false

 

April 6, 2020

 

 

Seven

 

Conscience makes you cowards

A god on the altar

Being deprived of the ability to listen to the world

In its own scope

Chasing the shadows in light and darkness

Chasing one's own footprints

There is no silence for you to respond

No sound to wake you up

Only memories of past stupidity

Fill up your endless empty nights

Except goodness

You accomplished nothing

 

Conscience will always castrate ghosts at night

Conscience puts the wishes of the wicked

Made them Golden armors undefeated by guns and knifes 

The bamboo in the wind and rain reflects your life

Which leaf

Isn’t it your incarnation?

Isn’t it the four seasons of morning and night and the constant staring?

You are migrating to the endless signs of change

Until totally exhausted

 

Too many deaths in your life

But, not every death

brings pain that is worth watching

is wining admiration and love

Fill your jade cups

Make your shadow stronger

Freeze the flag on the flagpole

Too many deaths

Too many denials

Where are your immortal tin rods?

Your cassocks have lost color

The pearl on the top of your hat is dim gray

Your jingle ring carried

And war horses

Your ink dripping inkstone

And a new baby garment

At same time, were disappearing in the depths of the desert

 

Nine times and seven hundred and twenty-nine times happiness

Like a spinning projectile

As gorgeous as text from a genius

Nine and seven hundred and twenty-nine Milky Ways

Rotate and overturn

drawing the sky that temporarily belongs to you

Extend a few hundred miles of ordinary roads

Create a holy place for people to admire

Through mountains, lakes and cities

Countless covered hands and closed eyes

Still glowing with dazzling light

In the sense of reality, you have never had

Praise

Also mourning

 

April 13, 2020

 

Eight

 

Waiting for you for so long, without knowing my pain

Living long forever, you will not leave me in vain  

 

May all lasting things treat you kindly

May death and its arrogant vassals treat you kindly

May all the dignified and detractors treat you kindly

 

The world will not become anemic and epic worship

What the world loses is a tiny moral

Shines or reflects among the stars

 

The prophecies you discarded remain in the past

Never is known for now

The beauty plundered by you still languishes behind you

 

You are the complete world in time

So that lasting thing will treat you kindly

And give everlasting things to himself again

 

The mountains and rivers are flying so beautifully with your eternal waves.

You have passed away, but you haven't left for a day

Because of you, we exist, with all our respect

 

April 19, 2020