A Duet with Zhuo Wenjun
Zhuo Wenjun:
Love should be pure, as white as snow on the mountain,
And as bright as the moon amid the clouds.
I heard of your duplicitous intentions,
So I came to break off our relationship.
Today we drink a cup of wine and bid farewell,
Tomorrow we part ways at the moat.
I walk alone above the imperial moat,
And watch the water flowing eastward.
Cold and sorrowful,
A bride at her wedding should not weep.
I want a man who loves me with single-hearted devotion,
And we will stay together as our hair turns white.
A loving couple should be like the shimmering fish
Wriggling at the end of a bamboo rod.
A man who values loyalty
Is worth more than money can buy.
[Zhuo Wenjun, “Song of White Hair”]
hülya n. yılmaz:
once the aged soul
has undressed to the core
layers of her body-fabric become vain
waiting for an annihilating frost to set in,
the inconsolable void might attain its resolve
fanaticizing that the fangs of lost love
have begun at last to will to eat away
the one punica granatum in decay
one red droplet at a time . . .
[hülya n. yılmaz, “a crying Pomegranate” in Aflame, Memoirs in Verse]
~ ~ ~
This poem is one of my three that have been included in the November 2019 issue of The Year of the Poet, published by Inner Child Press International.
hülyaswritings 