Bei Dao is laureate of the “Golden Wreath” Award оf Struga Poetry Evenings for 2015. He is the 50th winner of this most prestigious international award for poetry.
The Boundary
I want to go to the other bank
The river water alters the sky’s colour
and alters me
I am in the current
my shadow stands by the river bank
like a tree struck by lightning
I want to go to the other bank
In the trees on the other bank
a solitary startled wood pigeon
flies towards me
Requiem
for Shanshan
The wave of chat year
flooded the sands on die mirror
to be lost is a kind of leaving
and the meaning ofleaving
the instant when all languages
are like shadows cast from the west
life’s only a promise
don’t grieve for it
before the garden was destroyed
we had too much time
debating the implications of a bird flying
as we knocked down midnights door
alone like a match polished into light
when childhood s tunnel
led to a vein of dubious ore
to be lost is a kind of leaving
and poetry rectifying life
rectifies poem’s echo
For T. Transtrӧmer
you take the poem’s last line and
lock it center heart—it’s your center of gravity
center of gravity in a church swinging among tolling bells
dancing with headless angels
you kept your balance
your grand piano’s on clifítops
the audience grabbing it and holding tight
a crash of thunder strikes, a flight of keys
you wonder how that night train
caught up with tomorrow’s darkness
leaving your blue train-station house
you brave rain to check mushrooms
sun and moon, forest signal lights
behind the seven-year-old rainbow
a capacity crowd’s wearing automobiles as masks
Photography by Katica Kjulavkova
This post is also available in: Macedonian
