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| 2025/08/16 12:59:51瀏覽429｜回應0｜推薦0 | |
〈Luchang Dashan〉
(1) Upon the rings of a felled tree, I place a blade of thatch. The spinning needle of the phonograph plays the four seasons, the cycle of decay, of renewal, of green and withering. On cliffs with the bearing of Daoist immortals, a gentle push of the palm— and fox spirits, rustic tales and untamed sprites leap forth in chorus, echoes rolling like waves, surging one after another.
Then a crow’s cry seizes me, carrying me off under an assumed name, an erased face. I become the dusk wandering the mountain summit. In middle age, no poems remain— only images as lavish as falling snow. Who still lingers, circling like an eagle overhead?
Like an old monk with wrinkled skin and crane-white hair, seated cross-legged upon a moss-covered cushion, awaiting the wheel of rebirth, awaiting the Saisiyat warrior’s triumphant return from Lianxing Village.
The tung blossoms, unable to bear their solitude, at the passing wind begin to sway their waists and sing, loud enough to startle. The mountain is a monk seated cross-legged, clad in a gray robe of mist. Leaves hang like long eyebrows, closed in listening to the evening bell preach the Dharma. And once enlightened, they slip free from stem and branch, and drift with the wind.
(2) From afar come songs of men and women— there lies Siwaxi’ge. My friend, the old warrior Walis, hands me a deerskin flask: “Millet wine—two sips to warm your body.”
Above the snow line, lying by the fire, dry pinewood spits out tongues of flame, pine resin perfuming the air. The mountain, in silence, holds up its frost-red ears to listen to the distance.
Walis’s rough-hewn song floats in the evening wind, its echoes mingling with birdsong, insect cries, the moan of the breeze— a sonata in mixed chorus.
His lips tremble; his bleary eyes strain wide. In an instant, two murky tears bloom into crystals of frost. The firelight licks our cheeks, illuminating the tattoos upon his face— this ghost forgotten by the world, exiled by heaven and earth.
“That year,” he says, “gunfire cracked from the mountain’s foot. My people and I ambushed them on the trail toward Siwaxi’ge. The Japanese assault faltered— they left a dozen corpses behind, and, carrying their fear of the great mountain, they fled, tails tucked…”
(3) Hunting paths wind into the mountain like blue-green veins, reaching the place where waters end and clouds rise in the hollow.
On the ridgeline, the pines, unable to resist a lover’s embrace of breeze, at once reveal infinite grace. Across the greenstone slope, a pinecone tumbles to my feet, pleading for release.
Yet in the shadow, where trees stand like imagined foes, and the trail twists through peaks and deep forest, I too am only a wanderer, my soul as hollow as the berries by the wayside— though at least still full of spirit, still swollen with the lustrous joy of roaming.
Before me, a jagged peak turns sideways; sudden rain seizes the chance to close in. I break a taro leaf, like an acrostic poem, curling myself inward.
From my shadow I wring the year’s first cold and cough, while the mountain itself is rhymed into verse by the patter of falling rain.
That sound, limpid, far-reaching, makes me suspect— this cluster of wild lilies beside me are in truth just awakening suona horns…
Written in 2002, awarded 2nd Prize, 2005 “Dream Blossom” Literary Awards (Poetry). 〈鹿場大山〉 |
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