-After THE SECRET LIFE OF AN ANGEL
-After Jose Garcia Villa’s “Girl Singing”
Girl singing. Life. The curmudgeon
of death reaches for the everlasting
with an enlarging darkness
in spite of my best efforts to escape.
Song escapes from her lips once again! I insist. Breath of life!
I recite the Nirvana I hope to
reach, to keep reality
from suffocating imagination, from
draining the thoughts of many young
and old. He puts up many
facades, and I allow him:
the one who used to smile who no
longer understands emotion. “It’s a splendid adventure,”
he has believed as part of his
entrancement. “These are the cards
I have been dealt, but no longer wish
to figure out how to play,” I reply. Song escapes yet again.
More life. I cajole and I persuade:
“You cannot surrender, my clandestine
killjoy. For I strategized with
the cards I was dealt while you simply let time pass by.”
Song flees from her lips. Gasps of life. I truly
made an attempt at life while you lived vicariously through others
so I could go on adventures
only maniac individuals would dare attempt
only exceptional writers can capture through words.
I plunged myself into the ‘the comatose
life’ but my parachute opened
and slowed my descent. Unlike your
parachute, mine had a back up cord-
unfurling as I changed my mind
for Life which is only a struggle away.
(By and © Yichen Chiu)
[Note: Yichen writes: “I initially started this as an English to English translation and as the poem evolved I used the definition much more loosely …”]