Eddie Tay
SELECTED POEMS
an excerpt from Poems After Li Shang-Yin (813–858)
i.
Coming and going
like an echo,
you carried away a promise
lodged deep in stone.In the recesses of my mind
I see moonlight playing on rooftops,
hear the distance of a bell
and dream of you in another country…I scribble a letter, though this is a longing
with no address.Even as candlelight ignites these designs
of birds upon the quilt, the faint smell of musk
emerges from lotuses on my curtains.Coming and going
like an echo,
you carried away a promise
lodged deep in stone.I pause,
thinking of the distance of the hills.x.
Too quickly the furtive sun rises
and falls like our days
in this wretched country
as I search for you among tombstones
broken by the river.Joy, that you would leave me
to wander in the wilderness of my soul;
my feet trip on stones
scattered among webs
of frost hard upon the ground.I know our dance has ended.
The pale flowers drop as my fingers grasp
the air empty of your waist.
You left me to think
of a poem of daggers,craving, for wine to douse the pain
of a thousand burning sorrows
in my heart. I am driftwood
in a forest where trees are draped
in wreaths of snow.Too quickly
our days are burnt like incense
to ashes… I have no chariots
or horses to carry me through
this winter kingdom of my mind.
by Eddie Tay
from A Lover's Soliloquy (2005)
