"I would follow you as ashes mix with dust."
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Bob Sward's Writer's Friendship Series
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translated from the Chinese by Kevin Tsai
A Poem of Changgan (Changgan xing)
When my bangs hung about my forehead Riding on a horse of bamboo, you come Two children without dislike or suspicion, At fourteen I became your wife. I lowered my head to a dark wall; Only at fifteen my eyebrows opened to you: I gave you my antique promise. At sixteen you traveled far beyond the Gorge, Beware the month of May- there Your footsteps at the gates Moss deeper than broom sweepings. Leaves fell-- In August butterflies turn yellow, pair by pair, They hurt your wife, pair by pair. Tell me in a letter I will meet you-- nowhere is far---
_______________________________________________________________
I
played by the gates, bending off flowers;
Circling the well in play,
infant plums in hand:
Living in the lands of the boatsmen.
My shy cheeks widened for laughter
not once.
Beckoned a thousand times, I
answered not once.
I would follow you as
ashes mix with dust.
I won't climb the look-out for you.
Where the Horse-Head
Rocks pile high.
The apes call of sorrow, the heavens
wail.
Grew of green moss,
By autumn wind.
Early this year.
Flying over the
grass in the Western Garden.
She frets on a chair for her
cheeks growing old.
When you will come down from Sanba.
Even on the Sands of Lasting
Wind.
S-C Kevin Tsai is a doctoral student in the Department of Comparative Literature at Princeton University. His poetry has appeared in Salamander and Del Sol Review.