Reading Through a Moonless Night

[rejectomorph]

Night has fled by while I wandered in books. I barely noticed the absence of the moon. Now its waning crescent rises behind the trees, even as the sky turns pale with the glow of the following sun. Like the waning moon, I have arrived late. The words in my books are old, and cast only a reflected light from once-brilliant worlds. Unlike the sun, an age having set will not return. I wander the shades of cities and empires, my guides and companions the dried paper breath of dead poets and sages. In my world, they are ghosts, but I feel myself a ghost in theirs. In a thousand years, will some living thought brush this moment? Is that the source of the chill I feel? Already, the pale shadows cast in moonlight dissolve in the glow of the unrisen sun. Now shadowless, I might be transparent.

Regret

By Yuan Chi
(C.E. 210-263)


When I was young I learnt fencing
And was better at it than Crooked Castle.¹
My spirit was high as the rolling clouds
And my fame resounded beyond the World.
I took my sword to the desert sands,
I watered my horse at the Nine Moors.
My flags and banners flapped in the wind,
And nothing was heard but the song of my drums.

War and its travels have made me sad,
And a fierce anger burns within me:
It's thinking of how I've wasted my time
That makes this fury tear my heart.

-translated by Arthur Waley


¹A famous general.

Comments

across a certain distance

[emjayne.livejournal.com]

and into your cyber slice of life
I encounter beauty and resonance in your words
one line gave me chills (does this mark your shade's passing in my world and time?)
"...I feel myself a ghost in theirs"

Re: across a certain distance

[rejectomorph]

Thanks.

I'm not sure where that piece of writing came from, suddenly appearing among the pastorals and rants against the perversity of computers which make up most of my journal. Every once in a while, a thought strikes me, and I'm stunned out of my accustomed state of slack.

I'm pleased that you enjoyed it.

[marseille.livejournal.com]

Along with a bookcase, I inherited some old books. One had newspaper clippings of the tour of a great composer/conductor in the early part of the century, which apparently thrilled my grandparents. Another had a bullet hole, still unexplained. My father's Greek homework in his text from college, the complete works of H. Rider Haggard, a whole shelf of Dumas, all the sequels to Three Musketeers...and Hungarian self-taught. Just leafing through these took me into the past.