'Blest Are They That Stay...'
in memoriam Li Shenquan
(1)
'Blest are they that stay.'
So the trees would say:
see how the tallest longest of them
leafless at the end
receive the good,
reap the golden traces
of the longest-setting sun.
What we say is other: say
young, stay young.
'Later comers longer last' -
and what is last?
Ask it not of us who waver,
ask it of the wind.
(2)
No one writes them in.
Wind it is that blows,
blights them in:
pine's dark green,
bough's down bend.
Wind it is that makes,
takes: breath that comes
and in it was,
out it is
quicker than the light
that came and was,
quickly ending as the twig it wrung.
(3)
What you see of the wind that was
is the tree
that it gutted,
like every form an after:
trace of a could,
wreck of a would -
stump where the winged of a moment
showed,
glowed and did not stay.
--Lloyd Haft (for Dutch version and painting by Li Shenquan, see the post 'Li Shenquan 李神泉 in memoriam (gedichten)' with label 'NieuweGedichten', in the February 2011 archive)