scruta

You have to step away from the past

To see that it’s passed.

Love isn’t difficult;

It’s actually quite simple,

And that’s what’s so difficult about it.

Live with the strength of bamboo shoots,

Climb to the sky; affirm your roots.

I do not feel bad about writing terrible poetry anymore because I have been consumed by the idea that given infinite (or near infinite) time for the progression of humanity all variations, all possibilities of language have their moment, their genius.

BUT

Then I think of history. I think of the change of the world, the atrophy of language, the evaporation of time meaning fewer and fewer people will be able to know that genius.

BUT

Aren’t there timeless ideas?

Yes, but they are only accessible to the timeless.

BUT

Aren’t you just stroking your oh-so delicate ego? One that could be crushed by a snide remark at some cocktail hour? Or even just the terrible – oh, dare I say it? – mispronunciation of a word while trying to pontificate fluidly on the weather?

BUT

Don’t you have your own writing to save you? Don’t you have the internet? It is open (in some locales) and (barring the destruction of the servers that host your content) eternal. Yes, you ARE eternal. Oh scream it out in silences in cyberspace! Here nobody will know about the cluttered events of your pathetic existence! Here everything is neat and straight and pure!

BUT

You get ahead of yourself. Relax, poet. Dare to be terrible and perhaps you will make a small contribution, a subtle change in the way that people discuss having a cold or meeting a potential lover or mourning for the dead. This is still the immortality you live for, a glimmer of permanence in this vast sea of change.

BUT

But nothing…

I found this simple poem scrawled on the bathroom wall in a local coffee shop. What most impressed me was the usage of the word “了”. The symmetrical repetition of this character worked well to illustrate the author’s desire to put all of these things in the past. I came up with two translations where I tried to maintain the rhythm and repetition of the original.

剪了发

戒了烟

忘了她

Translation #1 (more literal)

Cut my hair

Quit the cigs

Forgot her

Translation #2 (a stretch)

Cut off hair

Stayed off cigs

Swore off her

Two young couples on the beach look at the sea.

They comment on how blue the water is seen from afar,

How clear the sky is, punctuated by clouds of white.

They point out a child playing in the surf.

Inside the waves there’s trash:

Shampoo bottles

Styrofoam computer packaging

Shreds of tarpaulin

Energy drink wrappers

Wooden meat skewers

Neon drawstrings

The top of a toilet plunger

Juice boxes

Chair legs

Paint canisters

Packing beads

The leg of an action figure.

The child picks up the leg and waves it in the air.

The couples begin to describe his movements.

They still aren’t talking about the trash.

Not yet.

It’s all gray, shades of gray.

You eat -

You sleep -

You dream -

You wake -

You love -

You make -

Gray.

All of it gray.

Still, you feel something

Something else in this gray.

A sparkling piece of clay

Molded in this mortal frame,

A connection to something

Fired deep in your consciousness.

You yearn to bring to the surface

To be born again.

Ask me what I am. Ask me.

I’ll say I am the shadow that carries.

I carry images that could be, but are not,

Reflections, quiet creatures,

Held high above a city that never ends.

In a world where machines grow minds,

Serendipity is the saving grace of humanity,

Bodies trundling into situations

Without a thought to what is known.

Musicians afire

Audience still

No one moves

Everyone is moved