wan shui qian san (lots of mountain and rivers)
Mountains placed
Upon millions lifted
Upon waters that come from up high
The sky
-
Separated by
An abyss that flies
The thousand mountains
and waters
Are but a dream
fluttering by
to the untrained eye
-
In a land
Where I stand
Moutains all around
and waters up high
confined
my thoughts
Of that impossible
Yet missing
-
Wait for me as a dream
Though we may still be unseen
my message will come
through the mountains
and the waters fluttering by
through a paper boat
Please be on standby
-
If you dream of
Many dreams
Then dream too about
me
Then perhaps you’ll
find me
My paper boat
The one fluttering by
in your dream
should it pass your eye
-
Pick it up and read it
So that eternity be in your hand
For I will never die
Once I know
you’d understand..
‘dead’ author
LOL
I translated this from chinese actually, from some sad story about an Indonesian maid who lived a hard life since young, needing to fish for coins tossed by tourists into the sea for a living.. then when she outgrew her childhood profession, together with her lover Rosli they fled to Malaysia to work as illegal immigrants. The Indonesian maid’s family was terribly poor, and her mother had a wasting disease while her siblings as skinny as bones.. so despite all the hardships she faced under a cruel employer, she persevered, for the sake of her dream of raising a normal family with Rosli, and helping her family..
However,
Rosli got into trouble for killing his employer, a palm oil plantation boss, because he refused to pay the worker his wages for the past 3 years.. needless to say, Rosli was now a fugitive, the Indonesian maid caught hold of the news from the newspaper.. due to repeated physical abuse by her employer and work fatigue, she accidentally murdered the employer’s noisy baby… soon she was arrested, and she never managed to contact her family.. she says she’s very tired of living.. and that poem was about the gap between her and her family, or in an abstract sense, her and her ambitions to lead a normal life, the imaginary paper boat, she hopes will somehow find its way across the Malacca straits and back to her home, to send blessings back home..
Hmm. People don’t always live happily ever after u know.. and some people are born into hardships, and leave the world in hardship too… meanwhile some people whose forefathers claimed they were Gods are now living as kings and queens of countries… those were the ones born with a silver spoon in their mouths.. an amazingly perfect, fairy tale lifestyle they lead…
People always express shock when young people die. Especially the sudden deaths of promising, intelligent young people.. as in the case of some recent motorcycle accident reported in the news.. but people don’t realize that being young is not being immortal… young people die all the time, society however obviously mourns for the ones they value more… despite the fact that all people, young and old despite their IQ and achievements, are all valuable human beings
Beauty lies in the eye of the beholder you say?
ugly ugly ugly ducklings we are.. wahaahaaha
