Edna St.Vincent Millay
one
"Excuse me, is Mr Yu Guangzhong at home? Oh, are you Mr. Yu? This is the pediatric ward of National Taiwan University Hospital. I'm telling you, your child is not well. The doctor said his condition was very dangerous ... What? Do you know that?/You know what? You just know. "
"Hello, Mr. Yu? I'm telling you, oh, that child is dying. I hope you come to the hospital at once ... you have black spots on your body. The doctor says it's really dangerous ... If you don't come, I'm afraid you will ... "
"This is the pediatric ward. I'm a pediatrician Huang ... Yes, your child has ... already 12: 30. We have tried our best to give first aid, but ... it's a cerebral hemorrhage. There's nothing we can do. We ate oxytetracycline last night, and your father came today ... What? Are you here to go through the formalities? Great, goodbye. "
two
"Today we are going to read an elegy by Shakespeare, and we are no longer afraid. Open Selected Poems, page 53. This is an elegy in Shakespeare's cymbeline in his later years. Have you ever read cymbeline? It is said that the book Tennyson read before his death was cymbeline. This poem praises the troubles of life, the tranquility of death, the impermanence of life and the inevitability of death. It praises the omnipresence and tolerance of death (death is in your wealth). The first three paragraphs are meditative, generally discussing the omnipresence and omnipotence of death. The last paragraph is like chanting a spell to the dead, which is a bit' lonely souls and wild ghosts, you can't commit crimes, but alas!' Taste. After reading this, I want to sing in a clear voice, just like Daotu chanting creative dead souls. Now, listen to me:
No exorcist hurt you!
And no witchcraft fascinates you!
The ghost will not forgive you!
Nothing will come near you!
"If you are afraid of ghosts at night, you might as well read this poem by Don Sally and be brave. There's nothing funny about it. In another 30 years, maybe you will appreciate this poem more. Now let's look at it from the beginning. The first paragraph says that when you die, you don't have to be afraid of the poisonous flame of the sun or the cold of winter (the child's pain is over). Even if you are a golden couple, Anthony Perkins or sandra dee, you will embrace the soil like a chimney. Oh, that's not funny. Less than half a century. Everyone in this classroom has become a pile of bones, a handful of moss and a piece of green phosphorescence (the child stops breathing for three days, just three days). I'm sorry, maybe I shouldn't have said it so horribly, but that's the truth (I just got back from the eloquent morgue). Youth flows through your fingers, so expensive and so sweet (there is no such plant on the stone surface of the morgue)! Youth is not ivy, it makes you wear it on your hand like a ring. Maybe you will hold it tighter when you get older, but at that time you only caught some gout and diabetes, and some sour memories. Even if I weave my white hair into a fishing net, I can't catch anything …
"When we come here, we will tie a knot and tie a knot after another, but we will solve it and solve it again until we are on the verge of death. In the womb, we tied a fast knot with our mother. But the nurse's scissors are in the front, and the dead scissors are in the back (the baby's umbilical cord has been untied and he will never see his mother again). Then we are busy weaving love, and then we find that the mermaid in the myth is just a myth. Love is water, and even the dense net can't catch a drop of blue. ...
"In this world, many souls are busy coming and many souls are busy going. Those who come have no names, and those who go may not leave their names. It's not easy to leave a name, and it's even harder to leave an adjective, like Shakespeare arean. I will do it. I see. I conquered it. Then death conquered me. The child, who hasn't opened his eyes, didn't see anything. There was a time when the black atmosphere of death was very strong. Pauline, please close the window. What a cold wind! This year seems to be his bumper harvest year. A modern poet (it doesn't matter where he goes, whether it is ancient or modern). The last lonely priest (spring grass is green every year, but what about you, my friend prince? An archaeologist (who will soon be the object of archaeology).
"Shakespeare is most afraid of death. There are more than one sonnet by One Happy and Fifty, none of which does not mention death, and none of which does not comfort itself. After all, his blue ink diluted the black of death. But he is still afraid of death and dare not write poems to curse those who violate his bones. The only person who is immortal and full of eternity is most afraid of death. Every genius is not afraid of death. The more talented you are, the more enthusiastic you live, and the more afraid you are of losing. Thinking about death in the shadow of death, Shakespeare did it. Li He is like this. So did Keats and Dylan Marles Thomas. Ah, I interrupted you again ... Is there a problem? Why has the bell rung? The siren rings his death knell every hour .............. (Why has the bell rung already? )
"Goodbye, Ling Chiang, goodbye, Carmen, goodbye, Pearl (although Pearl is his eye). Why does it keep raining? Thank you for your umbrella. I have a raincoat. Poseidon rings his death knell every hour. His death knell. (His death knell. His little coffin. His little hands. Holding tightly, but holding nothing, no one, even rain, has such small hands. ) Goodbye, Ling Chiang. Goodbye, girls! "
three
How sad Nanshan is, ghost rain scattered grass. Rain is falling on the sea. The rain is falling on the grass slope here. Rain falls on Guanyin Mountain on the other side. Rain's hand is very small, wind's handkerchief is even smaller, and the coffin under his arm is even smaller. The small one is the hand in the coffin. I hugged so tightly that I didn't hug anything except for three rainy nights and rainy days. Tidal wetland The universe and I are separated only by raincoats. The rain fell on the grass slope. The rain falls in the sea over there. Poseidon rings his death knell every hour.
"The road is too slippery. Just bury it here. "
"No way. No How can you bury it by the side of the road? "
"Almost to the top of the mountain. Find a corner nearby. Well, I think it's quite good here. "
"Nonsense! Isn't this the cornerstone you stepped on? There are already people. "
"damn it! How come even the dead are so crowded! There is no open space. "
"This is a mass grave. Okay, okay, there's four feet of space here. Let's do it here. what do you think? Do you want me to hold the coffin for you? "
"No, it's very light. Lao Hou, dig here. "
"How are the children buried in this area? Look at that monument! "
Following the direction pointed by the white sail, I saw a small mound five feet long. On the stone tablet in front, a few lines of red paint were newly carved:
Born in July 1947
Died in September 1952.
Daughter Su Xiaoling's Tomb Mother Sun's Father Su
"That little girl over there is smaller," I gently put the coffin on the bluestone case in front of the grave. "Look at this. 49 years old. 51 years later. It's pathetic. It's pathetic. Alas, there are so many kids. Death can run a kindergarten here. "
"That your child is not qualified to enter the garden. Does his mother know? "
I don't know. I won't tell her yet. Alas, there is no fate. We want a little boy. God gave us one, but he took it back in the blink of an eye. "
"Do you believe in God?"
"I believe in ghosts. You know, I'm excellent. I am as superior as bvron. Have you seen my translation of Muse in the Mediterranean? Shelley in a year, holding two small coffins to the cemetery for burial ... "
"When I was a child, I had a junior high school classmate who died of lung disease. After school every afternoon, I couldn't get through his door. As soon as it got dark, his mother leaned against the door, her face thin and white. When she saw me passing by, she stared at me and murmured her son's name. That way, Gherardini, afraid of the dead! Her son passed away in autumn. She waits for me under the poplar tree every night. She called her son for three years from this autumn to next autumn. Later, when I transferred to another school, I was able to avoid this witch ... On the other hand, a mother loves her son, which is really unforgettable. "
"When was that?"
"Fengdu county. Now I sometimes dream about her. "
"Dream of your classmate?"
"No. Dreaming of his mother. "
Someone sacrificed to the grave in the upwind direction. A woman. Cry strangely and painfully. Nettles are swaying in the rain. A wild dog sniffed at the top of the slope as he walked. Vaguely, many dead little souls are calling their mothers. The naive countryside here is cold and humid, and no one is playing games. Only Tomb-Sweeping Day can have parents to take it back. It's four o'clock in the afternoon, when we are eating snacks. My stomach is cold and hungry. Poseidon sounded his death knell on time. It doesn't matter whether you attend class or not. It doesn't matter. Although Poseidon mourns the death knell, the class ended on time.
"What classes do you have in the morning?"
"English poetry, Shakespeare's fear is no longer and fully understood five. Students don't know why they chose these two poems. Ocean goddess timing ... okay, okay, that's deep enough. Gently, gently, don't touch ... "
Shovels of black mud plunged into the deep pit. Soon, the little white coffin disappeared. My heart is shaking. An iron gate closed to me.
"Go home." My companion called me under the umbrella.
four
Satellites: I am glad to receive your letter from Xuefeng, Iowa. I'm glad that you enjoy your passionate love in a foreign country below zero. Holding my little lover's hand, I stepped through the snow in Bai Jingjing and crushed the yellow oak leaves on the ground. When the wind comes, turn up the mink collar of the coat and watch the snow fall on her brim. I can see your happiness, because I was once imprisoned in a hexagonal white house in that small university town. Living in a different place must be the same.
I am in the cold rainy season. All the troubles of snow, but not as bright as snow. Wet weather and tidal land, rain and steam floating, filled every corner of the space. The hair of Casuarina equisetifolia and Eucalyptus is soaked. When it is dark, the bile in autumn can be twisted in overlapping shadows. Stick out your foot, and you will step on less than an inch of soil. Hold out your palm, and cold tears will drip into your palm. Both the sun and the moon usurped the throne. Every day is a solar eclipse. Every night is a solar eclipse. Rain clouds hang down their wings over this joyless city if they want to hatch a fierce year. In the long run, my lungs can hear the sad songs of the crowd, and cockroaches will climb up my spine.
In your letter, you congratulated me on giving birth to a child. I don't know how to answer you. I can only tell you that the baby was born, but not under this roof. His roof is much smaller than this. He slept soundly on an unusually comfortable little sofa. Anyway, I have given him all to the outdoor rainy season. There is no house number, and there is no day or night. It was a very quiet kindergarten, with no swings and no boating. On the top of a high mountain overlooking the coast. Poseidon rings the bell every hour. In the rain, rotting lavender turns into fireflies, and the dead fireflies flow with neurotic blue phosphorus. Before long, he will donate it to endless expansion, and it will flow into the frozen soil under the grass, Ganoderma lucidum with nine stems of nutrition or thorns in the wild. After the grave sweeper left, the whirlwind blew away the paper horse and the horse stepped on the cloud. Luo Siniang of Qiufen sang Li He's poem, and all her ears pricked up sadly. A 100-year-old bird cultivated into a wooden symbol and competed with mandrill to eat the leftovers from the sacrificial grave. Suddenly, everything was wandering, and the naive country returned to its original silence. The air echoed with the poet's mother's reprimand:
Spitting your heart is your ear!
It is always the poet's mother who is most opposed to writing poetry. My mother can't object to me anymore. She listened to the floating picture for five years, listening to the bronze bell in the temple shaking at dusk after dusk, ghosts flying from the bottom of the tower, like a group of bats afraid of light. Mom. Mom. The best music should be a wooden fish with a bronze chime. It is raining here. It's raining on the sea in the distance. The rain fell on the top of the small grave in the cemetery, and the wild daisies on the top of the grave went up and down. The rain is falling on mom's tower. It's raining here in the channel, and it's raining there, too. Late rain. It rained twenty years ago, and it will rain twenty years later. Children reading ancient Chinese under tung oil lamp. It is raining harder. A mother who called her child to bed in the rain. Under the same tung oil lamp, my mother tied my shoelaces. A mother blown away by oxidation to ashes. The autumn rain in Bashan enriched the autumn pond. Teenagers listen to the rain in Bashan. Tung oil lamp supports the desolation of the black dome. Now listen to the rain monk Lu, are there any stars in the temple? Middle-aged people listen to the rain, listen to the ghost rain, pour it on the children's new grave, pour it on the mother's ancient pagoda, and pour it on endless memories. The rain is more rampant. The tiles on the roof are beating wildly. The heart attack in the empty house reached its climax. My wife is upstairs in the maternity hospital, listening to the ghost rain knocking on the window, mixed with the voice of her mouth calling for her mother. Father tossed and turned in the rheumatic bed, coughing weakly and drowning in the rolling rain. Everything is far away from me, and tonight, it is close to me. The rain tonight is full of ghosts. Wet and pure thoughts, gloomy, dark and dense, cold and clear, miserable and sad. Tonight's rain is full of searching, this ghost rain tonight. Falling on the lotus pond, this ghost rain falls on the broken limb of Luolian. Even Lotus has a tragedy in which a family of nine was killed. Lotus flowers are connected, and a thousand-fingered lotus petals are held for one summer and released for another. Now it is the ghost rain in autumn night, which falls on the broken flat surface, like a Chopin who lost his hair and eyes and abused a harpsichord. Many whipped souls begged for Amnesty in the rain. Ghost calls ghost to answer ghost. On the night of the eclipse, the lost white fox fell dead beside the body of the green raccoon. Bamboo yellow. The swimming pool is cold. Furong is dead. Groundwater has corroded the nose and upper lip. At the foot of Xiling Mountain, the wind and rain are beating, and an unprecedented coup is brewing in front of the grave, and the hibiscus is like a face. Covering the sky, black wind and black rain collapsed from the cracks that broke the dome and the sky, and fell from all directions on the compass to all directions of us, slamming down and falling down. In The goddess patching the sky, Nu Wa sat on a colored stone and cried in despair. Broken lines and remnants of stone stories. Stone Town is also full of ghost rain of the Six Dynasties. How many pedestrians shed tears under Yugur platform, on Mawei slope and in front of Yang Gong Monument. And landed in Xiangshui. Still falling in the drizzle. Su Xiaoxiao, still in the West Lake. The black wind and rain put out the cold green candle in the stone tomb of Su Xiaoxiao. The drizzly ghost rain has been raining since Dayu's time. Rain fell on the soil of China, and Lili infiltrated into the stratum of China. The history of China is full of rain stains. It seems that from the stone age to the present. The same sensitive soul endured endless desolation and shock in different bodies. After crying over Man Qing, Chuzhou Prefecture also joined the ranks of white bones. Crying wet blue, Jiangzhou Sima also became a bitter bamboo and yellow reed. Even Wang Ziqiao can't take Li Bai and his wine bottle. How many earthworms are floating in the rain tonight.
This is the edge of the letterhead. Blind night groping for the wind and rain. Everything is gloomy, only a moustache grows under the lips. Tomorrow morning, the green knife of my razor will enjoy a big breakfast. This airmail aerogramme will also rush out of the thick rain clouds and fly eastward in the crisp empty sparrow orchid.
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