scruta

Two young couples on the beach look at the sea.

They comment on how blue the water is seen from afar,

How clear the sky is, punctuated by clouds of white.

They point out a child playing in the surf.

Inside the waves there’s trash:

Shampoo bottles

Styrofoam computer packaging

Shreds of tarpaulin

Energy drink wrappers

Wooden meat skewers

Neon drawstrings

The top of a toilet plunger

Juice boxes

Chair legs

Paint canisters

Packing beads

The leg of an action figure.

The child picks up the leg and waves it in the air.

The couples begin to describe his movements.

They still aren’t talking about the trash.

Not yet.

It’s all gray, shades of gray.

You eat –

You sleep –

You dream –

You wake –

You love –

You make –

Gray.

All of it gray.

Still, you feel something

Something else in this gray.

A sparkling piece of clay

Molded in this mortal frame,

A connection to something

Fired deep in your consciousness.

You yearn to bring to the surface

To be born again.

Ask me what I am. Ask me.

I’ll say I am the shadow that carries.

I carry images that could be, but are not,

Reflections, quiet creatures,

Held high above a city that never ends.

In a world where machines grow minds,

Serendipity is the saving grace of humanity,

Bodies trundling into situations

Without a thought to what is known.

Musicians afire

Audience still

No one moves

Everyone is moved

What gives one pause is not how the universe is, but that it is.

What moves you forward is thinking not that one is, but how one is.

The following is a translation of a poem by the 20th century Chinese poet, Xu Zhimo. What intrigued me most about this poem is its representation of the descent into nihilist despair that extreme pessimism induces. It’s a descent that inevitably goes so deep that it destroys itself or it destroys the pessimist… It’s the speaker’s interjection at the end, 休！休！Stop! Stop! (or perhaps, Rest! Rest!), which brilliantly illustrates this eventuality.

《悲观》

徐志摩 作

一

青草地，

牛吃草，

摇头掉尾，

天上的青云白云，

卷来卷去。

二

登山头，

望城里，

只见黑沉沉的屋顶，

鳞次栉比，

街道上尘烟里，生灵挤挤。

三

教堂前，

钟声里，

白衣的牧师，

和黑裙黑披的老妇女，

聚复散，散复聚。

å››

歌舞场，

繁华地，

白的红的，黑的绿的，

高冠长裙，笑语依稀。

五

庙堂中，

柴堆里，

几块破烂的木头，

当年受香烟礼拜的的偶像，

面目未朽，未朽！

å…­

战场上，

壕沟里，

枪炮倒在败草间，

到处残破的房间，

肢体，血痕缕缕。

七

天灾国，

饥荒地，

草木尽稀，

小儿不啼，

黑灰色的空气。

å…«

心死国，

人荒境，

有影无行，

有声无气，

深谷里的规子，见月不啼。

九

噫！

噫！

十

幻想破，

上帝死，

半夜梦醒睡以尽，

但这黑昏昏，阴森森，

鬼棱棱。

十一

这心头，

压着全世界的重量，咳！全宇宙

这精神的宇宙，

这宇宙的宇宙，

都是空，空，空……

十二

休！

休！

----------

Pessimism

By Xu Zhimo

1

A field of fresh green grass,

A cow eats the grass,

It shakes its head and swishes its tail,

Clear white clouds in the sky

Spool together and fall away.

2

Climb to the top of a mountain,

Look at the city below,

All you can see is the sinking black of roofs

Row upon row of them,

On the streets and in the dust and smoke

Souls are squeezed tight.

3

Before a church,

At the ringing of a bell

Priests in white frocks

And old women in black skirts, black shawls

Come then go again, go then come again.

4

The ampitheaters,

The areas of great prosperty,

White and red, black and green,

Tall hats and long skirts, vague smiles and speech.

5

Inside a temple,

In the piles of incense,

Several pieces glow as they burn,

This year receives idols worshiped by incense,

Faces that shall not be forgotten, not forgotten!

6

On the fields of battle,

In the soggy ditches,

Guns and artillery lay on the fields of defeat,

In the crumbled wrecks of buildings,

Limbs, covered in bloody scars.

7

Kingdom of calamity,

Land of famine,

Grass gathering around the thinning trees,

Little children who do not cry,

The air of soot.

8

Kingdom where the soul dies,

Land of ruined men,

Shadows without form,

Sounds without breath,

The cuckoos in the deep valleys,

Do not call at the moon.

9

Oh!

Oh!

10

Phantom destroyer,

God of death,

Being awoken from midnight dreams is enough,

But this persistent dim, this forest of darkness

Demons sharpened on demons…

11

This heart

Pressed by the weight of the entire world, ack! The entire universe

This spirit of the universe

This universe of universes

Are nothing, nothing, nothing…

12

Stop!

Stop!

Technology is not progress;

It is amplification.

I do not speak.

I breathe in deeply and exhale slowly

Like it’s the middle of winter

Watching my breath dissipate into the air

Lit with the glow of a million fireworks

Taking to the heavens in unison

Banging on the dome of the sky

With the hopes of a million people

Shuffling through the streets of vermillion

Kicking up the ash and empty mortars with their toes.

Did I see it there?

Did I see the future of China

At the empty Expo site

Going over the Lupu Bridge

In the bright morning sun?

The pavilions of pleasantries were exhausted.

All commercial viability had been extracted from the shells

Of buildings, now crumbling like exoskeletons

Shed off in the promise of something new.

In a vacant lot beside the remains,

I saw mechanized infantries parading through parking lots.

The future was coming, rolling in with the morning sun.