— Rhapsody on a theme of Fang Si
Ah night
night falls so impatiently
do not sing a mournful song
do not capture me with melancholy
do not interrogate me with questioning eyes
I only sigh a sigh
a sigh over this little poverty
December on the Tropic of Cancer
someone trailing a black cape
is passing through a white arch
he is going to the Sun’s funeral
the Sun has gone home
The Sun has a home but not I
I don’t even know my homeland
strangers those ancestors
venerable but I do not know them
and the markings on the luminescent clock face
but there is a continuous knocking
starting since Galileo’s prayers
they abscond with those numbers
that were never mine
but keep on leaving their stains
on my overcoat
Every time night stretches in darkness
I walk on the fourth string
the sky is raining the stars are weeping
the street extends there are no shadows
shadows are cuddling me
and half the strolling Earth
and all those that were ever named recede
do not sing a mournful song
the stars in clusters they are calling each other
across millions and millions of light years
do not sing a mournful song
Nobody remembers my name
really not even myself
it is nothing but an oblivion
a lost overcoat
I am poor
deprived even of memory
postcards penguins sent me
crackling sounds from under the icecap
The tide recedes
in a faraway island universe
there is a lone voice
telling a story where nothing happens
listening all the stars ascend
I realize there is nothing
it is nothing but illusion
nothing but void telling about void
Night multiplies in darkness
piling up multi-angular bubbles
I curl up under an overturned nest
the slumbering Cosmos broods me with a cool drowsiness
and caresses me with Ursa Major’s velvety touch
Rachmaninoff swings by on a tailless comet
I smell the magnetic music of Octopus Galaxy
through transistor channels come nonchalant sneers
sneering at my self-concocted joys
and yet I have none
I even dare not expect anything
dare not in the moments before dawn
sing escape from this spiral universe
wanting to say something but dare not
lest even this little poverty
ah night shall be lost
Fang Si, (b.1925): Modern poet from Taiwan.
''Rachmaninoff": cf. "Piano Concerto no. 2"
Translated 2019