In the City of Shadows

 
You might ask me,
what do you see through this warped, half-blind mirror?
I'll listen with a smile, lips sealed, and yet,
on my next journey, I'll keep looking toward it.
With unwavering confidence in my chest I keep stumbling,
look at me closely, and you'll find yourself.


See, I measure the mountains of the moon.
I know those mountains are far from where you are.
You should measure their shadows instead. Shadows travel such distances!
This is how I'll tell you about
the shadows of everything scattered beyond the world:
shadows of mountains,
shadows of houses,
shadows of cities,
even shadows of ourselves.


When you're cast out of paradise
you'll find fire even in faithful bushes.
The mind wants to know why. Listen then...
Since I've been living beside you in unfamiliar trembling for so long,
my destination remains a secret still. I've learned to fear death.
For who knows how long I've been walking casually over corpses
scattered at the edges of the world's fields,
and trembling with fear when
one helpless night I opened the sacred book hoping for direction,
I saw everyone was happy there—us, them.
I placed it back in its proper place with proper reverence at the proper time.


Throughout the city, dark statues are hawked,
familiar winds break trying to bloom pearls
and drunk people laugh again.
No one thinks of the dark sculpture, no one has ever seen it.
Autumn suddenly arrives in the city, bringing flashes of light, old men's chatter,
instrumental thunder between houses,
drums beaten sharp and scattered—
in hard times no one salutes the giant.
Lovers just keep laughing, ignoring all this, and
at their feet time's children crawl.


......Yet,
each time the sun sets, or sometimes isn't visible at all, remaining hidden,
the cool shadow of a massive statue
lingers across the mute city,
and when lamp flames flicker,
shadows of great horsemen whisper stories,
some silent tears walk quietly through rooms,
and in the killer's merciful heart, regret is born for every tenth murder.


Today a caravan of people moves here.
Sometimes through imagined roads,
through night's mysterious storms, but
not through fear and wonder.
They all carry a dream in their minds...
They'll hear the words of disguised conscience in the dark night.


Terror catches the authorities' eye only when lightning strikes,
quite beautiful to watch though!
Still, I've never liked such splendid scenes before.
In the invisible corner of the quilt being sewn with their mothers' tears
remains an immeasurable gap.
Even human weeping has cracks these days,
through which mountains can easily leap and melt away!


Before the deadly, ice-cold horror
only the sound of incredibly congenital blind clicks can be heard,
we see nothing, if someone does see we tell them bluntly,
Sir, you're mad!


Though sometimes we do open our eyes.
I see people
bringing an innocent little calf to the slaughterhouse.
They bow down to the burning coal and the previous deer.
Seeing these preparations people take a gulp of satisfied laughter,
and those they call brothers
dig some well-ordered grooves.
People throw stones with hellish sounds at their offerings,
they demolish even the last hut of honest poets. About whom I love,
people speak ill of her too.


Clocks no longer ring the hours,
bells now ring clocks—
the clock turns knowing when the bell will ring or not ring.
So some people take the bell of my heart
and hang it on the wall.
About clocks, especially how to use them,
they keep giving such knowledge, though they didn't know
when sound becomes a scream, and then can't be stopped.