Writing poems for myself

Writing poems for myself

“明天的明天的晴天/你我的你我的流年/时光的时光的缱绻/午后的午夜的散漫”

I always feel like writing something on a piece of paper anytime I’d like to. The Chinese fragment above was written when I was waiting for a lecture to start. The game of playing with Chinese rhythm is truly fascinating to me as what is to be completed can be totally neat both in sound and in appearance once successfully done. To tell the truth, I do appreciate the Chinese language and I do personally hold the belief that Chinese is tremendously feasible for poems. It can be so charming in itself. It is not an enjoyable thing to translate a Chinese poem to an English one, but I have tried.

“The sunny day of the day after tomorrow

 The flowing time we relish together

 Nothing hurries as the light shines cozily

 Lie in the couch from the serene afternoon to deep in night”

You can always have fun with what you enjoy even if you do not do well. If you savor what you like for yourself, who cares what you are doing except yourself.

I love a poem written by the Irish poet William Butler Yeats called When you are old. Actually, however, what impressed me a lot at the beginning was the Chinese translation version by a Chinese author Feibai, which is incredibly beautiful for me. When I eventually manage to find the original one, I was a little disappointed. The meaning was of course more impressive and charming than the translation, but I do not appreciate the rhyme that much.

When You Are Old

When you are old and grey and full of sleep

And nodding by the fire, take down this book

And slowly read, and dream of the soft look

Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,

And loved your beauty with love false or true,

But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,

And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,

Murmur, a little sadly, how love fled

And paced upon the mountains overhead

And hid his face amid a crowd of stars

Again, I do think the raising up and down of tones are much more distinct in Chinese that in English, for it is conspicuous that Mandarin has four separate tones for every character while English do not. Maybe the Chinese in poems can be considered more musical.

In the end, I think the most typical modern poems of Chinese are in various pop songs. Some of them are considerably well done in terms of lyrics while others are just acceptable when the tones are changed into a song. I write for fun, just the same as I listen to music to enjoy myself. Hope you can find the way you get pleasure from yourself despite of what others think about your job.