HE QIFANG


Prophecy

It has finally arrived—that heart-throbbing day.

The sound of your footsteps, like the sighs of the night,

I can hear clearly. They are not leaves whispering in the winds

Nor the fawns darting across a lichened pass.

Tell me, tell me in your singing voice of a silver bell,

Are you not the youthful god I heard about in a prophecy?

You must have come from the warm and exuberant south,

Tell me about the sun there, and the moonlight,

Tell me how the spring air blows open the hundreds of flowers,

And how the swallow lovingly clings to the window twigs.

I shall close my eyes to sleep in your dreamy songs—

Such comfort I seem to remember, and yet seem to have forgotten.

Stop please, pause in the middle of your long journey

To come in. Here is a tiger-skin rug for you to sit on.

Let me light up every leaf I have gathered in autumn,

Listen to me singing my own song.

Like the flame, my song will dip and rise in the turn, again

Like the flame, will tell the story of the fallen leaves.

Don’t go forward, the forest ahead is boundless,

The trunks of old trees show stripes and spots of the animals.

The serpentine vines intertwine, half dead and half living,

Nota single star can fall through the dense foliage above.

You won’t dare to put your foot down a second time, when you

Have heard the empty and lonely echo of your first step.

Must you go? Then, let me go with you.

My feet know every safe trail there is.

I shall sing my songs without stop,

And offer you the comfort of my hand.

When the thick darkness of the night separates us,

You may fix your eyes on mine.

You pay no heed to my excited songs,

Your footsteps halt not for a moment at my trembling self.

Like a breeze, soft and serene, passing through the dusk…

It vanishes, and vanished are your proud footsteps.

Ah, have you really silently come, as in the prophecy,

And silently gone, my youthful god?