Time Is A Thoroughbred Poem by Feipeng Shang

Translated by Yiyan HAN (c)
2018-01-14


I know you're just hiding behind my back
I know you're playing hide and seek
I know a flower, even in a wild mountain valley
Is a flower. An unknown beauty is beauty

I know you're there somewhere on the earth
Searching and waiting for me
And welcoming my arrival
I'm also looking for you by opening the face
Of every day, every hour and every second
And warily reading the pace of your retreat

I know the girl behind the big tree
Indeed is you, peeping at my withered face
Full of wrinkles like the autumn colour
Of fallen leaves blown by wind. I do know
The white cloud drifting across the blue sky is you

In this world, nothing is remarkable
And nothing is forever. A fragile love
Is like a fragile jade, or a petal ruined by storm
For humanity, understanding is never perfect
But misunderstanding is absolute

Honesty and forgiveness, these two words sound easy
Yet who can be honest and forgiving, truly
A real big-hearted and broad-minded person
Must be a saint, who's so far above us that we can't reach
Even if doing our best, besides always there's someone
Who needs a war and causes suffering

The world is so vast, and how far can we go
A heart can be infinite, and nothing wrong with this
Where's the person with a heart that can really hold
The whole world? Where has our life been wasted

I know you're indeed hiding in my heart
I call you, call you again loudly but you don't want
To come out to see me. You are a princess waiting for a prince
I'm only a commoner, a wild horse running in barren mountains

I know you're the very miracle of that moment
That will come and push the life's evolution to the limit
All the words spoken in dreams and our undeniable mutual longing
Every night, walk to the blooming stage

I know brilliant smiles in the sun played repeatedly
By the piano, and the triplets run in a hurry
The soothing yet intense notes, oh, like pearls
Woven together by beams, possess the tremendous strength

They can shift a mountain, uncover sinful conspiracies
Harden the soft, and soften the hard. Nowhere
They can't penetrate, occupying your heart through ears
Calling your soul out, and crying for love and kindness

Do you know eternity? Do you know death
And sunshine, earth, blue sky and rivers
Wind is blowing, water running, trees waving, birds flying
Baby being born, and the elderly dying
Are these the essence of time

Time is a thoroughbred racehorse, passing each day
Before our eyes. When with her
The day turns dark very quickly
Time is a grey hair, suddenly occurred on your head

Time is a tender grass, a tough tree
The damaged wall in an old house, the arrogance of youth
The bride under the veil, and a candle lit and burnt out
O, the ancient castle, you're our youth forever lost

Time is a mouth, going to speak but stay in silence
A river, an abandoned old well, a fly, a criminal case
A wound of constantly being torn open and healed
And the distance between life and death

Time is the grand square full of people, the legs
Of a man and a woman elope, the war of one group of people
Against another, the air, the thinking and action in the air
And a pair of hands reaching out to you

Time is my woman. Without her I'm miserable though
I can barely survive, often awakened at midnight
Time is wait, the longing of one person for another
And the process of continual struggle for a sound sleep

Time is that democracy has defeated tyranny
In the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe
Time is that I've defeated myself
O, time, I ring your doorbell with my tongue tip
And brighten your future with a bright red couplet

Time is an old man with long beards
Time is a suicide who's asleep and never wakes up
Time is an ocean, the every wave in her bosom
Happiness, sorrowfulness, and the fanciful thinking
While dead lying in a coffin

Time is an enormous womb. She cuddles me close
Embraces the earth, and clasps the whole universe
War and peace are in her bosom
The throne and beauty are in her lower belly
O, let me ride this thoroughbred across time and space