remember:"Shiloh" Melville / "Requiem" Dao

"Shiloh: A Requiem"

~ Herman Melville, April 1862

Skimming lightly, wheeling still, 

      The swallows fly low 

Over the field in clouded days, 

      The forest-field of Shiloh— 

Over the field where April rain 

Solaced the parched ones stretched in pain 

Through the pause of night 

That followed the Sunday fight 

      Around the church of Shiloh— 

The church so lone, the log-built one, 

That echoed to many a parting groan 

            And natural prayer 

      Of dying foemen mingled there— 

Foemen at morn, but friends at eve— 

      Fame or country least their care: 

(What like a bullet can undeceive!) 

      But now they lie low, 

While over them the swallows skim, 

      And all is hushed at Shiloh.

"Requiem"
By Bei Dao, translated by Eliot Weinberger

for Shanshan

The wave of that year
flooded the sands on the mirror
to be lost is a kind of leaving
and the meaning of leaving
the instant when all languages
are like shadows cast from the west

life's only a promise
don't grieve for it
before the garden was destroyed
we had too much time
debating the implications of a bird flying
as we knocked down midnight's door

alone like a match polished into light
when childhood's tunnel
led to a vein of dubious ore
to be lost is a kind of leaving
and poetry rectifying life
rectifies poetry's echo