April, the Misty Love
The years are peaceful. The fingertips of the graceful youth are as white as jade. Though the ten slender fingers hold together tightly to cover the sun, rays of golden light can shine throgh them.
The warm April is a month of dreams and illusions. Reflecting the flying time and scenes of the past, haven’t you had the youth as pure as the azure blue sky? Haven’t
you once been tameless and obssessed? Haven’t you looked far into the distance alone
to see the flashing colored lights in the illusonary night when the dim light loomed in the deepening twilght, lurking and hiding themselves here and there? “You are the blooming flowers over the trees, you are a swallow twittering between the beams, full of love, full of warm hope...”. Beautiful and meaningful as Lin
Huiyin’s poem is, and who will copy the poem You Are the April of This World - Ode
to Love to me?
Let the heart be free and may whatever it cry. With the lonely pen, I myself touch the warmth of a firework gently. I think of the cold eyes, the powerless search, the whispers scattering in the sprays and the yearning shaking in the wind. Perhaps the true happiness is always possessed by the sea, neither by this shore nor by the other shore. Standing in the bustling street, watching the traffic flow and being filled with lonliness, I know nothing of where to go or what I should own ... Alas, som things become loads once they are possessed, and the more the possessed, the heavier the loads are; some things undoubtedly possessed don’t belong to me; some things
don’t seem to be possessed by me, but belong to me ...
Regardless of whether you are happy or sad, stop your love and hatred, close your eyes softly and listen carefully to the dance of the shadows of trees and the floating of clouds out of the window. When trying hard to use up a day to sleep, it feels like sinking into the gloomy seafloor, like reliving the seasons experienced by the sleeping beauty: Sleeping from the unknown end and wake up on another side of the world, the vast ocean of the mind is wider than sea, and the bottomless night and the movement
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of constellations whisper the infinite mystery of time and space.
1Many times I have recalled of the self before crossing the Naihe Bridge and
2recognizing your face of the prelife mistily. If I had not drinked the Mengpo soup,
would I be able to pick you out of the crowd? Thistles and thorns extended around my bed while an instant of time stopped at a certain moment out of shock. However, the blurry memory has been preserved in its perfect state.
3The road to Weicheng is rough and full of obstacles, but who will give a timely delivery of a proper kiss at the right moment? The sound of horseshoes rings across mountains and streams, and who will come on a white horse? Who will cut off the rusty chains with his sharp sword?
The dreamworld of sleeping beauty is bleak, and time flows away like wind and sand.One hundred years later, the rose of love blossoms on her lips that are as cold as the moonlight on the sea. In fact, for my lofty character, I love the fairy tales that are half bleak and half gorgeous.
Same as watching the sudden thunderstorm at nightfall, standing in the middle of the pure white snowland stirs the mind. At the moment when the grey clouds overwhelm the sunny sky, all I want is to sleep in the darkness and go to your sea to find my scallop. I meet the mermaid who drops tears that turn into pearls in the starry night. And how many sorrows she have had to make the sea resplendent with pearls. I want to stroke her hair gently, hear her tell about the singing, the two legs, the disappeared foams and the age-old love story which is handed down for many years. I want to put my arm around her shoulder and watch how the moon turns from cool to cold at a place near the great rocks.
In a place far away, you say, from your window, you can see the sea. This limitless sea distresses me so much. Maybe it’s because of lonliness and the noise outside the
window that I stay sleepless the whole night and imagine those things on my bed: I fly half way around the world to see you and your light and to hear your waves. I open the eyes as if it is after several centuries to find the sunny sky with harsh daylight. A new day will be full of new stories. Let me enjoy the bright spring, run fast, love, experience and write a cheerful and beautiful poem. Though I can not pick
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you out among the crowded peole, I still believe what I have devoted will be engraved in your heart...
Looking up to watch the clean sky, and I look down to think of you. Are you the beauty who stay near the water thousand years ago and roaring a boat out of The Book
4 of Songs? The shy sickle moon on the sky, which is still lingering on the flaming red sand on the river, calls for me impatiently, “Cloud, are you here?”
Walking in the earthly life and humming for the fleeting of time, I am used to find the true self in faint pains. Let the time that gently touched by fingertips become as charming as a warm smile at night. Though the youth becomes blurry, the mix of pureness and maturity of life is reserved.
The rain makes the peach blossoms seem redder, while the wind blows off pear blossoms; so the April is half bright and half sad. Allow me to borrow a wisp of spring wind to clean the pathway which is full of falling flowers, then drink with you under
5the chrysanthemum hedge and sing songs under the moonlight. I wait for you, as if waiting for myself. The blooming of flowers on trees represents the blosom of nature in spring, together with feelings and dreams. April has a wisp of sadness, but if it is settled by brightness and elegance, won’t everywhere be filled with the warmth that
invites dance?
Notes:
1. In traditional Chinese myth, Naihe Bridge is a bridge in the hell, which the soul of man must cross in order to have their rebirth.
2. In Chinese myth, Mengpo soup is a kind of soup every soul must drink, so that they can forget their experiences and have a rebirth in the mortal life.
3. Weicheng means a city which is besieged by the enemy.
th4. It is a classic of Chinese culture, which includes poems written from the 11
thcentury BC to the 6 century BC.
5. It is an allusion. There is a line in Li Qingzhao’s poem Zui Hua Yin, that is, After
drinking wine at twilight under the chrysanthemum hedge, My sleeves are perfumed by the fragrance of the plants.
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