Shostakovich Chamber Symphony in C minor, Op. 110a
(Orchestral version of the Eighth String Quartet)
This is a life's soliloquy burning on the strings.
Humming an old nursery rhyme,
but stuck on a modulation.
Is it a remnant of "Katusha"?
Or a mother's lullaby cut short?
Sinking into the deep sea,
the opening melody echoes again,
but this time it no longer asks.
It just silently curls up,
like an unfinished tombstone,
like all things named "fate" before they had time to be born.
When the last overtone fades,
I find this funeral has no coffin —
the music itself is the remains.
And we listeners,are merely standing before a mirror,
watching our own entrails being written into a fugue.
True life
is a creation with ink still wet, even in its destruction.
Spring's Judgment
Overnight, the hammering of thunder
nails all pink testimonies
into the mud.
In the courtroom of bare branches,
green blades timidly climb the witness stand —
while that cherry-blossom clad afternoon,
an untraceable,
distant testimony.
Green Light
We practice holding our breath,
sinking into the deep blue
in each other's eyes —
moonlight pierces the surface, turning you into my dear executioner.
And all the unfinished
bullets —
float towards the shimmering green light on the other shore,
I part from you on the barren platform,
the train whistle drowning out the confession tied like a cloth strip.
Waking is the remnant of dawn,
stuck between my ribs.
That song has become a crescent
of salty moonlight by my pillow.
For Barton.
Missed Encounter
I came with the whole morning's expectation,
but only felt my own face, distorted.
Two waits dissolved like sugar grains,
and disappointment quietly crystallized.
Like two leaves about to fall,
at the moment the wind rises,
each drifts towards an opposite silence
— we always pass by, missing each other.
Actually, I just couldn't buy the watermelon slushie...
4 AM Insomnia
The alarm clock's plot hasn't yet succeeded,
but the darkness has already crumbled into the color of a grey cat's fur, startling me awake —
my lungs are smuggling air,
my heart is like a fist, quickly clenching and then loosening.
Time is stuck between the pages of a book that won't close,
the rustling pages revolt, making the sound too loud.
When eyes are closed, I am a fog-rower in dream space,
when eyes are open, I am a specimen imprisoned by the bed.
My soul is folded inside last night's poem,
like a misplaced tonal rhyme,
like a punctuation mark curled into a ball.
If insomnia is time's installment plan,
right now I'm mortgaging my skeleton to the dawn.
