Turquoise Watershed

 
Don't come to me, but if you must come
come to my poems.
On autumn leaves falling from trees,
I write what I want.
You've come? Then sit.
(Dear reader, when someone really comes, you can no longer address them as 'you'.)
On an altar I've placed some of my poems; not for reading, such poems.
Please read, leaving those aside.


One autumn my conscience was expelled from turmeric-yellow chambers.
Believe me, not a single unnecessary word remains in it now.
In that soft bed of a silent, dark room
where no one has slept for so long,
don't just enter and lie down! Take a moment,
ask your own mind,
who still plays the flute on chattering lips, sitting on ice?


The weary one has no one to thank,
for he falls asleep.
Some places exist that are drowsy,
many wondrous half-poems float around those places.
The way we garden in our courtyards in early autumn,
poems float like that in the poet's ocean of sight before diving deep.


What if someone comes anyway?
If someone comes quietly now, they will
stumble against my back and ask, are you tired?
Their hands, soft as rose petals scattered in a teacup,
will reach through my hair to my brain, I know.
They will then remove their silk scarf and place it
on my chest so I don't freeze in the cold.


In this world, only she could measure my fever with her lips.
Today there was no word of her coming, yet she came!
When I go searching for myself, I only find her.
Everything remains in this contrary mind. Life feels less safe these days because I don't forget.


I was stumbling over one of my own abandoned poems, when I remembered,
I used to stumble before too, and she would watch.
And if such things became regular in my rest or my soul's wandering,
she would quietly dim the lamp and say,
now go to sleep.


Often a light would turn treacherous, and
far away, becoming sunlight, it would break the dreams of landscapes
and bring down firefly-bright cold in autumn's evening.
Some hearts would flee, hurting those who are easily hurt.
In just such an unbearable time, the lamp's flame ignites
fire in the damp air. Then death
climbs the courtyard walls and rattles around
the living evening.


Those disguised people who speak loudly
vanish into the scent of trees.
The woman sitting on the bench beside me—
her eyes grow dry, her head trembles,
and she watches herself die in her own eyes.
I think, how lonely people are! One who has everything, yet
lacks what they want—watching them, I should have learned the meaning of living.


Let the leaves fall from trees if they will! I know,
in the future too leaves will have to climb trees only to fall again.
Such ascent is meaningless. Without thinking of all this
I will simply sit here alone, aimlessly.
I can fall silent anytime, don't keep anyone beside me to listen, though
I can't say I don't need to talk to anyone.
When my poems stare at everyone with raw eyes,
no one looks back. I understand, ah, then this first day of autumn is bitter!


Wind flows like endless water there, where
a river's turquoise basin awakens,
and even darkness's rays never fade.
There trees hang masks of sunken ships,
shrubs survive eating spiders from great forests and jellyfish from water,
one road only, which moves forward fearlessly like a snake rising from the sea.
Along with it, a lake is visible, in that lake my dreams lie drowned.