Pigments of time
blots and blooms
into the canvas of dawn.
The tiered eaves of the ancient pagoda
sign off the night with the waking ray
Mist drifts apart
like a half-whispered morning greeting
forever deferred in the bleed of light.
–Jujube
Tangled vines,
like frayed harp-strings,
enact a wayward joy.
Worldlings have turned away,
hidden indoors to nurse their fire.
But the trunk bends
into a question mark
between frost and rust,
challenging all the assumptions of the season.
–Jujube
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
— Robert Frost
Where the light fractures,
no shadow, past or present,
can hide you.
Time, pinned in space:
does it lift what you carry,
or anchor it forever?
Amid the silent roar,
going, yet never gone,
you stand,
trying to finish the sentence.
— Jujube
脚著谢公屐，
身登青云梯。
半壁见海日，
空中闻天鸡。
…
列缺霹雳，
丘峦崩摧。
洞天石扉，
訇然中开。
Wearing the climbing shoes of Lord Xie,
I ascend the ladder of blue clouds.
Halfway up, I see the sun rising from the sea,
In mid-air, I hear the rooster of heaven crow.
…
Lightning flashes and thunder roars,
The peaks and ridges crumble and break.
The stone gate of the cavernous heaven,
Thunders open to reveal the sky.
— Li Bai 李白 (701-762)
My small, preserved princess,
you cradle yesterday’s snow
and last night’s shadow,
each a parenthesis in fur
around your perfect refusal.
How delicately you decline
the invitation to wake
and play the part assigned.
The nursery clock has stopped at forever,
and still, you will not blink.
— Jujube
晴空一鹤排云上，
便引诗情到碧霄。
A crane soars above the clouds and soars high,
Lifts my poetic heart up to the azure sky.
— Liu Yuxi 刘禹锡 (772-842)
The messenger fractures the dawn,
arriving without a message.
Light is stranded
in the hollow of the collarbone.
We watch the moment rehearse its own extinction
Flame alone, the compass;
Sparks alone, our stories.
–Jujube
I need the sea because it teaches me.
I don’t know if I learn music or awareness,
if it’s a single wave or its vast existence,
or only its harsh voice or its shining
suggestion of fishes and ships.
The fact is that until I fall asleep,
in some magnetic way I move in
the university of the waves.
— Pablo Neruda
The beast of night, lost in silence.
In its eyes, an unnamed sea.
The boy’s breath settles among moss
The compass sleeps inside the backpack.
We sit side by side,
a footnote to the forest,
waiting for a shooting star
to point the way
to the spring we lost.
–Jujube
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