by Shenzhan/申展
Time goes by in a strange way after the beginning of 2020. These years, I find myself looking for something to get lost into, desperately. And I rediscover the power of written languages through poetry.
鹿柴 Deer Fence
王維 Wang Wei (701－761)
空山不見人，Empty hills, no one in sight,
但聞人語響。only the sound of someone talking;
返景入深林，late sunlight enters the deep wood,
復照青苔上。shining over the green moss again.
Translation by Burton Watson (1925 - 2017)
THE PEACE OF WHILD THINGS
by Wendell Berry (1934 - )
When despair for the world grows in men
and I wake in the night at the least
sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s
lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the
great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with
forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still
water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am
free.
A Personal Note for July/August 2022
Of all the living things, are humans the only ones burdened by memories and forethoughts?
A few weeks ago, in the deepest grief over mom’s passing, I was convinced that the darkest summer is yet to come. Temperature keeps rising, the sun burning more brutally every day, people finally spilling out in the park, on the lawns for concerts, picnics, sunbathing…… I walk and bike around as many past summers, but this year with a hole in my heart, the ache of longing to see my mom again. The world feels less kind and less warm without her, and I am struggling to belong to it.
One hot afternoon in July I found myself lying in a park in Astoria, New York, looking into the canopy formed by the trees above: layers and layers of leaves on top of each other, in different shades of green – some translucent in the sun with a magnificent glow; some thicker and darker in the shade as a contrast; mischievous birds chirping and jumping gingerly in between branches – above it all was the blue sky, pure as crystal; far as the furthest memory.
Without words, the trees stood there, extending and growing. Are they silently contemplating the life in the past? Or whispering to each other in the breeze their worries about the future? They seemed just happy to be alive for that moment, and happy for every moment that they are alive.
Turning to nature is to turn to the moment that one exists enough to know and to feel. Trees don’t tell me in plain human language, but their mere existence remind me the great comfort nature offers, just like words by Wang Wei, and Wendell Berry.
Astoria New York
7/24/2022