November 8, 2015

Xiamen, Southern China

The day of Winter Begins on Chinese calendar.

By X. Z. Shao

 

Red sky, dusk,

Human hearts, blood,

Passion, crying out,

A deep cavern, engulfing,

Or an enlightened mind,

Drunk and paralyzed

In the twilight.

        2015/11/9

A purple green bird

By X. Z. Shao


A purple green bird

on a stalk of lotus,

long-beaked,

with its head,

swift and mechanic, 

shifting up and down

left to right,

with many looks I took

I was busy drawing it.

My sketch was left undone

when I saw only

the half-curled stalk,

barren in autumn,

lowered and withdrew

its head to itself. 

           2015/10/29

She washed yarns in a brook,

By X. Z. Shao

She washed yarns in a brook,
a Burne-Jones’ nymph hanging
over the Mirror of Venus.
Flying birds forgot fluttering their wings,
while carps thronged to kiss her hands.
Her sable tress cascaded over
her humble flax-woven dress
which barely contented                 
her wavy shape, ripening breasts.
Her pale moonlight face
radiated a smile that commanded
bees to turn away from flowers.
Her songs of ancient tales,
of joy or of sorrow, accorded with
the crystal water flow.
Oh, do not take her away
to the stagnant, muddy court.
Do not powder her face                             
and teach her skills to charm.
She was a temple of innocence.
For her, the sunset was golden,
and the nearby hills were drunk.
              2015/7/2

A deceased person,

By X. Z. Shao

 

A deceased person,
or a historical figure,

when being mentioned,
is usually followed by
a pair of brackets indicating
his years of birth and death
with a hyphen in between.

A person alive

has only his birth year
followed by a hyphen
with an open end.
The short line seems
waiting for the missing number
to be filled in.

Once you were born,

you were given
a number, a hyphen
with its quiet longing
for a conclusion,
sometimes with patience
sometimes without.

            2015/5/23

你帶我去的地方遠勝於故鄉

By X. Z. Shao

 

你帶我去的地方遠勝於故鄉

那是一片無人涉足的熱帶雨林
仿佛夢裏長街，女郎芬芳，迎面走來

茂盛的林叢，意識的迷宮

那裏生命奔流，一如情人忘情接吻
晚風令人迷醉，流螢似燈火翻飛

我要你牽手夢遊鷹隼野貓的領地

聽野性的呼喚，把陣陣狂喜注入骨髓
繁衍的季節，夜行的狐狼多麼溫順

濕氣結成露水徐徐降下，野花綻放

它們的護葉挺拔，盡情地呼吸
林中有交響，把無言者的心曲傳唱

我們爬上那塊巨石，燃起火堆

你看，遠方的星辰也是火堆點點
火堆旁也有人凝望夜空，甜蜜依偎

         Morning to noon, Tuesday, Jan. 16, 2007

A Chan Case

An English rendering of a well-known Chan story by X. Z. Shao.

 

“Come, a hard nut 

for you to crack.”
said a master to his disciple,
“A man raised a goose
in a huge vase with its neck
about the size of your fist.
It soon grew to be
a large goose in the vase’s belly,
and the vase neck is too small
for it to come out.
Now, you need to get it out
without breaking the vase,
and the goose should be
alive and intact.
How do you do it?”
His disciple racked
his brain for a solution---
the vase, the goose,
breaking the vase,
killing the goose...
He troubled his mind
for a long time and stuck.
At that moment,
he found a staff
falling on his head out of the blue,
and a thunderbolt voice
of his master exploded, “out”.
His mind blacked out all a sudden
and he smiled after a while.

      2015/5/21

Life is such a thing

X. Z. Shao

Life is such a thing
no one can withhold from
asking if it has meaning.
Well, its meaning lies in
that your mind is completely
absence of the word “meaning”,
and you even have no idea
of “the absence of the word ‘meaning’”.
Look, a swan at the lake center,
a moon under the water.

         2015/5/21