酷我-北美枫

Collaborative Version (Valentine's Day Love Poem)

Four Steps to Seducing Calliope (Xiaoshi) co-authored with ericcoliu

Revision I:

First eye to eye
then hand upon hand
later mouth on mouth
and eventually
feet across feet

We are
each other's dream

Revision II:

First eye to eye
then hand upon hand
later mouth on mouth
and eventually
feet across feet

Only then are we a single dream

Original Versions:

I Met You

First eye to eye,
then hand upon hand,
later mouth to mouth,
and eventually,
feet across feet.

Ericcoliu's Poetic Reply:

feet across feet --
we dream
each other's dream

The Time of the Tale co-written by ericcoliu

Go back, way back, to the earliest times
when men and women, elders and children
sat together, gazing at one another,
at green fields,
blue skies,
mountains and valleys,
rivers and oceans,
animals and plants,
lighting and fire,
wondering, speculating,
pondering:
(as it is our human nature to do)
What is all this that we see
unfolding before our eyes?
(and what are these impulses
unsettling our hearts and minds?)
Questions were asked,
words were spoken,
and stories were conceived --
told, remembered, and passed down,
through the generations to me.
Now, it is my turn to tell the story to you.

Note:

The Time of the Tale was handed down from a scholarly storyteller to me. Now, it’s my turn to tell this story, hoping that you’ll remember and tell it to our future generation.

A Dream Lost

While looking out at the courtyard
Where the sky is shedding its tears
For fallen leaves and petals
I sit inside
Mourning for a dream
Lost to Time

I rub my teacup
spinning it around and around
Time is destroying itself, relentlessly

在夕光里，顾城

在夕光里，
你把嘴紧紧抿起：
"只有一刻钟了"
就是说现在上演悲剧。

"要相隔十年百年！"
"相距千里万里！"
忽然你顽皮地一笑，
暴露了真实的年纪。

"话忘了一句。"
"嗯肯定忘了一句。"
我们始终没有想出
太阳却已悄悄安息。

Sunset Glow

In sunset's glow,
your lips tightly closed,
you say, "There are only fifteen minutes left,"
meaning the tragedy has already begun.

“Maybe ten or a hundred years apart!”
“Maybe a thousand or ten thousand miles away!"
Suddenly, you smile playfully
showing your real age.

“I forgot to say one sentence.”
“Yes, you have definitely forgotten that one sentence.”
We never figured out what that sentence was,
not noticing that the sun had set.

English Garden, my reflection on the recent heated debates among fellow poets

English Garden --
A small pond where lone poets,
drunk with desire and longing,
sit alone and reflect upon themselves.

Note:

English Garden is my reflection on the recent heated debates about writing, reviewing, and translating poetry and about being an good reader of the works by other writers among fellow poets.
(please read
The NeverEnding Story posted at http://www.coviews.com/viewtopic.php?t=39000 ,
Earthquake Haiku posted at http://www.coviews.com/viewtopic.php?t=38331 , and
This Generation and Far and Near , http://www.coviews.com/viewtopic.php?t=37902
)

Poem Text of Nothing Gold Can Stay by Robert Frost

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.

Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

Chinese Translation

貴重之物實難久存

自然的初綠貴如金，
她的色澤最難保存。
她的新葉像一朵花；
但也只能保存一時。

之後樹葉覆蓋樹葉。
同理伊甸淪為悲切，
同理黎明降至白晝。
貴重之物實難久存。

Note:

Nothing Gold Can Stay first appeared in his 1923 volume, New Hampshire, his first book to win a Pulitzer Prize. Some Frost scholars claim that the poem helped Frost to win a Pulitzer Prize. Nothing Gold Can Stay is remarkably brief. Only eight lines long, it consists of just forty words. The diction is extremely simple. No word is longer than two syllables. Most are monosyllabic. This poem is still considered one of Robert Frost's best, also featured in the book and movie, The Outsiders, which was written by S.E. Hinton.

The Death of an Enemy Combatant

“Now, it’s your turn, John,.” she said invitingly.
“Uh, I, …” John seemed to have something stuck in his throat.
“Take your time. No rush.” She looked gently at him.
“One night during my last week in Kandahar, I and another medic named Joe went out with a platoon into the enemy’s occupied base to see if anyone was still alive. We entered this bunker or cave, and found that there were pools of blood, scattered body parts, and pieces of human flesh stuck to the walls. Then I found something that was moving. When I approached it, I found this a dying Afghani, who was waving his arm. When he saw me approach him, he just stared at me. There was no aggression in his eyes. Rather, they just cried, “help me.” I was staring right at him and, uh,…, I didn’t do anything. I…I stood there, doing nothing. About a minute later, his arm just stopped … stopped moving…”
“OK, John. Take a deep breath. Let’s stop here, today. You can go now. Just don’t forget to take your meds.”

The Death of a Soldier

Each piper's note. Each salute. Each pallbearer's step. Each hearse. Each chaplain. All painful reminders to the death of a fallen solider. Death is unlike any other event in the world; It stands for the unique, for the irrevocable, for the irreversible, for something that can't be repeated. Death gives meaning to all those images and phrases; all other applications for such images and phrases are but metaphors at best, dead words at worst. Death give its brute, non-metaphoric meaning to the point of no return. Each death is an irreparable loss, a loss forever, and eventually a loss of a world.

A Day in His Life

"A pleasant evening, isn't it, my dear?" He relaxes on the bench, looking like the jolly Laughing Buddha with a largely exposed pot belly, his bald head covered with a sports hat. There is really no more peaceful place to be on a cool summer night than right here. He sits contently, talking to his wife.

"You know, this morning, I made up my mind and went to Lee's office, and I, I, ... Never mind. Let's not spoil this beautiful feeling." He stops talking, and watches as stars begin to populate the sky.

He is a frequent visitor here. He comes when he is troubled, when he is happy, and when he just misses her -- which is pretty much all the time. He sits on his personal bench, relaxing for a while. The breeze caresses him.

The sun has set. He gets off his bench, stretches, and ambles back to the car. He turns on the ignition. He drives aimlessly through the town. Another day of his life has passed by, silently and swiftly.

Hong Kong, the City of Man

Draining the colour of the sun, the crimson forest of skyscrapers stands atop a sea of concrete, where glassy urbane lofts share borders with gloomy rooming houses.

Snow Birds

Unreal cities
Under the thick blanket
Of a winter day
Canadian snow birds*
Flocks of deserters
Have flown south
Nesting in palm trees.

Note:

Canadian "snow birds" are obscenely wealthy Canadians who fly to sunny Florida for the winter.

In those days St. Anthony persuaded many to embrace the solitary life. And thus it happened in the end: there are diverse groups of Christians that renounced marriage and possessions. Within a short period of time, cells arose in the deep mountains, and the desert was colonized by the monks, who were imbued with a revolutionary ardour and enrolled themselves for the citizenship in Heaven.

One day a young desert monk was tormented by temptation, and he decided to leave his cell and move to a place closer to other monks. As he put on his sandals, he saw another monk not far away who seemed to start to put on his sandals. He yelled out, "Who are you?" "I am your ego," came the reply. A silence fell between them. A silence full of weight and loss.