What To Escape From?
当秋天到来时
果子已从枝头
逃到摩天大厦的楼顶
Autumn is a harvest season of joy and peace. But the first stanza of the poem strikes me with an unusual autumn image: the ripe fruits escaped to the top of the skyscrapers, which is perplexing albeit resonating the poem title "Climax". Then, what did the ripe fruits escape from? Have they succeeded? What will they do after seeing the blue sky at the top of the skyscrapers?
The second stanza starts with a similar line, accentuating the arrival of the season, with a subtle difference from the first line of the first stanza by adding some adverbs omitted to better portray those dreadful and scurry fruits and conversely restoring the season’s peace. The poem ends abruptly after this line “我敲响了键盘" without any hints provided but leaving room for imagination.
The poem "Climax”, written in everyday language, contrasts the fleeing fruits and the calm “me” when autumn arrives to build up a set of intriguing and surrealistic imagery. As mentioned above, the different moods in the two lines about the arrival of autumn create different rhythms: desperate and dread in the fleeing and settling to write. A ripe fruit destined to be eaten or rot to death tries to escape from its fate. Seeing the blue sky high above might alleviate it out of fear momentarily but does not provide a permanent exit out of the hopeless plight. The soothing mood in the second stanza implies the joy and peace from writing to enrich and rejuvenate our spirits. Maybe, when the harvest season arrives, we are forced to face the eternal struggle in humanity - fear for the fragility of our physical existence and the longing for persistence of our spirituality – then flight or fight?
A ripe fruit is always a symbol associated with primitiveness. Back to the days when human beings evolved into Homo sapiens, they went hunting and gathering fruits for survival. The juxtaposition of ripe fruits and high-rise buildings brings out the contrast between primitiveness and modernity, which is also continued in this line “我敲响了键盘”. A keyboard, a modern tool, is explicitly associated with an ancient drum through the word, “敲响”, typing on a keyboard as beating a drum in a ritual.
A drum, presumably the oldest musical instruments made by human, first appeared in the Mesopotamian civilization around 6000 BC. Since then, it has embodied universal life force energy that connects everything and everyone and often used in religious rituals or ceremonies.
In the novel “Lost Love”, how a shaman of the San Bushmen, the oldest inhabitants of southern Africa, conducts a curing ritual and establishes connection to the other world is evocatively written.
"在非洲，桑人被其他黑人部族认为可以通灵，因为他们有一个神秘的宗教仪式——幻舞。仪式上，全体部落的成员围在篝火旁，首先要杀死一头巨大的牛羚，用牛羚的血在不同世界间建立联系。然后，在单调的击鼓声中，巫师带领人们开始围着篝火长时间地转圈。一边转一边摇头摆手，最后所有的人都无法行走，有的跪在地上用头不停撞地，有的像动物一样爬行，有的仰面躺倒失去知觉，很多人开始流鼻血，出现幻觉或者意识丧失，眼中的人物变得又细又长，长着各种动物的脑袋。这时巫师就通灵了，可以进行医疗、祁雨或者与冥界的亡灵交流。"
A great poem is “within chaos there is order”, where the complexity interwoven by time, space, memories, emotions, feelings, thoughts, ideas, etc., is unfolded layer by layer through our analytical reading and thinking - a journey to nourish our soul.
附 摘自立兄的博客里的中英版本
顶点
当秋天到来时
果子已从枝头
逃到摩天大厦的楼顶
当秋天来到的时候
我敲响了键盘。
Climax
when autumn comes
fruits have escaped from the high branches
to the top of the skyscrapers
when autumn comes
i start to drum aloud on a keyboard
