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Waiting for Your Arrival Tonight…

□ Robert Xie

 

 

Waiting for your arrival,

Let the expectant sight be frozen

Waiting for your arrival,

Let the wandering figure be weathered.

Without your presence,

whom do I warm the wine for?

Without your presence,

with whom do I play the zither to greet the moon?

 

Waiting for your arrival,

I make a slab of heart-ink and a kettle of tea.

Waiting for your arrival,

I play a plain tune and light a petal of heart incense

Waiting for your arrival,

let’s sit by the pavilion and appreciate pink lotus.

Waiting for your arrival,

let’s walk along the dew-moistened rainbow bridge and play flute in the cold night.

 

Ah, remember, do you?

The year when you read books under the candlelight and danced gracefully with silk fan.

Ah, remember, do you?

The year when we sat by the window listening to the rain beating banana trees.

Ah, forgotten, have you?

The predestined karma of our love.

Ah, remember, do you?

Our unchanging fidelity and solemn promise.

Ah, realize, do you?

I have let slip your love for millennium.

 

Long ago,

I was the candle burned out for you to watch flowers falling.

Yet, you have never noticed my painful wounds.

Long ago,

You were the lonely yellow flower budding outside my window in cold spring.

Yet I have never heard of your helpless ravings.

Long ago,

I was a vagabond riding against the wind on the horse.

And you were the red mud under the hoofs,

In vain you accompanied my journey with your lifetime redolence

Long ago,

You were a girl picking lotuses in the South.

And I was the clear wave beneath you.

The sudden departure has turned my hair grey.

 

Tonight,

The flowers choke with sobs.

The wind breezing and butterflies dancing.

Standing silently in the darkness of the night,

I am watching for the clear moon,

Waiting for you to ride on a lotus boat,

coming along with songs.

Under the moonlight, my solitary figure speckles like mosses

dissolving into an ink painting with the hazy night view.

 

Tonight, I am confiding to you my bitterness of circuitous separation

Tonight, I am pouring out my love for you.

Tonight,

I am confiding to you,

how my shirt is soaked with tears;

Tonight,

I am confiding to you,

how my face is haggard with frosts.

Tonight, I am waiting for your arrival.

 

I am riding on the drifting cloud,

My shirt fluttering,

looking for you all the way along.

The falling flowers,

are my free verses.

So, with fragrant breeze,

You arrive leisurely, the skirt waving in the wind.

The drizzles,

are your great charms unable to be scattered by the wind.

 

A thousand years’ monastery rituals,

A thousand years’ religiosity before Buddha.

I have knelt down praying to Buddha for a thousand years.

I have yearned for your arrival for a thousand years.

Do you hear,

my calls in the tiresome journeys?

Do you hear,

my footsteps trudging over the drifting years？