A Seperation Poem by Anne Yun
A Seperation
I spread my face under the rain
Till waterdrops wash out my features
Till nobody can recognize this nobody
The streaming water takes away the pain
And the pebble ponds keep my old picture
I can feel the abandoned face is being angry
I don't really care since my new face is all clean!
What an incredible rapture! What an incredible rapture!
No restless eyes can stare anymore that once-fair lady!
My watery skin, pulled by its merciful string
My bare feet, driven to its wonderful future
O nature! My nature! I'm a new nobody!
'I'm nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there's a pair of us - don't tell!
They'd banish - you know! '
I am a new nobody, and there's a pair of us!
I find that poem by Emily compelling but it hasn't produced an answering poem from me. Your poem is a worthy extension of hers. To be more precise, you inhabit the same metaphor Emily uses but intensify the speaker's need to erase herself. And it seems to me she mostly wants to escape from herself, to inhabit a cleansed body with an emptied mind. Your image of the speaker's face being literally washed away is one of the most powerful passage I've read. This is self-destruction just short of suicide and shows a complete collapse of self-esteem. When you imagine a situation as intensely as this woman's story then YOU, and your readers don't have to live through it. You live it vicariously and that's enough to learn about the fragility of our personality in an often lonely world. It's a remarkable poem.
I am the sum total of everything that went before me, of all i have been seen done, of everything done-to-me. I am everyone everything whose being-in-the-world affected was affected by mine. I am anything that happens after I've gone which would not have happened if i had not come. Nor am i particularly exceptional in this matter, each 'i', everyone of the now-75-million-plus of us, contains a similar multitude. I repeat for the last time: to understand me, you'll have to swallow a world. Someone else already developed this insight profoundly!
BEING A NOBODY MIGHT BE THE FIRST STEP FOR THE POSSIBILITY OF BEING EVERYBODY! Wow, Anne, this is an amazing statement. You must do more with it: a poem, a short story, an essay. I really want to see how you develop this insight.
The simplicity of Emily's words go deep into my heart, when i shared her Nobody with friends, they were all impressed by it. I think i really know her longing of being nobody, the shackles from stares (men's words, judgements from others...) could be overwhelming, after all, freedom of being a women can hardly come entirely to a women! Being a nobody might be the first step for the possibility of being everybody!
This one, dear Anne, proves that your poesy has an open bright future to walk into.//I have not read the poem of E.D. you refer to, although I have translated some poems of hers into my language.Which is this one you refer to?
Hi, sir, thank you for the encouragement. And the poem is 'I am nobody, who are you', 'The Madwomen In The Attic'is a modern book in literary criticism.
This poem has not been translated into any other language yet.
I would like to translate this poem
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4/26/2024 9:03:11 AM # 1.0.0.1119
Dear Anne! I loved such tenderness and purity that flows mildly from your poem - that I made a translation in Russian, (I made it regular. because the Russian poetry has to be regular) , Я отдала свое лицо дождю. Пока дождем не смыло все черты. оно не стало видно никому. Я отдала свое лицо дождю. И струями вода омыла боль, и в лужах рябь хранит мое лицо. и там навек оставлено оно, и от покинутости стало злым оно. Мне все равно - ведь новое чисто! какой восторг! неведомый восторг! и праздный взгляд не узнает давно красавицы черты - он смыт дождем. Cтруна добра, и кожа из воды, босые ноги в будущем бегут, Природа, все твои силы - мои, Ведь я - твое Никто, по-новому.
Dear Liza, thank you very much, really appreciate your translation.