"Absurd Spring" - A Poem

Author: Joey Zhou

Translated from Chinese: Joey Zhou

Music: YouTube Link - https://youtube.com/watch?v=6rQwof50VsA&feature=share

Why,

Dreams wake up in the dead of night?

Just no wind, no rain, and no heavy shadows;

Why,

Will the white clouds settle in the pools in the wilderness?

There is no blue sky, no roses, and no fish swimming back.

On the edge of the dark green forest

I stand at Frost's fork,

Scalp tingling, saying aloud:

"Road not taken

Road not taken

The road not taken!!!

I clearly heard

Yeats humming the Bolero drum

Day and night thinking of Maud Gonne...

I ride my horse from the fog

Dah dah dah dah dah,

Infinite spring leaked light at first...

On the road of spring, on the vast land of spring

To sing

Finally,

Under the sunset

The twilight bell rings...

This time it's not the orchestration of Ravel's Divine Comedy

It's Blake's divination and ignorant prayers:

"To see a world

In a grain of sand,

And a heaven

In a wild flower;

Hold infinity

In the palm of your hand,

And eternity

In an hour...!”

No dawdling, no pause, no translation

I sang an emotional "Excuse"

Ask

Absurd spring...!

(Written in the small town of Walnut, California near Los Angeles on April 15, 2019.)

Author's Notes:

1. "The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost

Robert Frost (1874-1963) was an American poet born in San Francisco, California, and later attended Dartmouth College and Harvard University. Before his poetic life, Frost worked as a farmer and taught Greek and Latin in middle school. His first collection of poems was published in 1913. One of the reasons Frost's poetry is so beloved is that it can be understood by people with little schooling. While many poets were keen to experiment with poetry, he insisted on using everyday language to describe his observant everyday events. Many of Frost's poems reflect his closeness to nature. He expresses symbolic meanings through nature, rather than just descriptions of rural life. "The Road Not Taken" is a famous poem by Frost, written in 1915.

2. William Butler Yeats (1865 -1939) was an Irish poet, playwright and essayist. He was a famous mystic, the leader of the "Irish Renaissance" and one of the founders of the Abbey Theatre. Yeats's poems are influenced by romanticism, aestheticism, mysticism, iconography. Influenced by symbolism and metaphysical poetry, he evolved into his own unique style. His poetry represents a contraction of English poetry's transition from traditional to modern. Yeats's early creations were in the style of romanticism, such as the poem "Celtic Twilight" (1893) with its dreamlike atmosphere. "When You Are Old" is one of his most famous poems.

3. "Bolero" (1928) is Maurice Ravel's Divine Comedy.

4. Maurice Ravel (1875 -1937) was a French composer born in the small town of Sibone, Pyrenees, France. Incorporating elements of modernism, baroque, neoclassicism, and, in his later works, jazz, he liked to experiment with musical form. He was influenced by Chinese music and the Impressionist composers such as Claude Debussy. His style had a strong connection to classical tradition, but with often with expression and creativity as in his best-known work, Boléro (1928).

5. William Blake (1757 -1827) was an English poet of the late 18th and early 19th centuries who was not known as a poet when he was alive, but later became recognized as a seminal figure in the history of poetry of the Romantic Age. He was most famous in China for the translation of the following four-line poem titled "Ignorant Divination" (translated by Joey Zhou):

A grain of sand sees the world,

One flower is one day,

Hold infinity in your hands,

Let eternity stay in the moment.

6. "Excuse" (White Lie) by Joey Zhou

"When the excuse for death is life,

I am your breath,

When life's excuse is love

I am you! "

The Beverly Arts News is sponsored by JH International Art Institute