I was planning to

Read the poem I prepared for you

At five thirty-five the time the moon rises

It seems that we had passed the time

But I think the moon is rising now

Then I shall read this poem at the time of moon rise

the time when the moon is most beautiful and fullest

In the year

I shall read this poem to you

At the time of moon rise

I be the Rhododendrons that cover the mountains

Just for a spring of no regret

I be the stars

Offered to a summer night

I be the numerous rivers

Flowing toward the one and only ocean

I be the moon

once again illuminated, for you

If you are the island

I be the ocean that embraces you

If you set sail

I be the breezing waves

If you go on a voyage

I be the road

Arranged with smoothness

Follow you to afar

When you are tired from walking

I be the night

The lodging on the side of the road

With clean bed sheets

For you to sleep on

There are dreams in your sleep

I be the tear stain on your pillow

I be the arm that you grab on

even your hair turned grey

I be the furnace fire by your foot

Converse the memories of old age with you

You are laughter

I am the song that echos

You are tears

I am the starlight that follows

When you are buried

I be the grass that accompanies you

you turned ashes

I be the dust

If, if only you still feel attached to this life

I pray another wish

To be with you in the next life

This is a poem

That should be read at the time of moon rise

Once at a full moon night at Tidaan on the East coast

I read this poem with several students

I don’t know why

I love reading and writing poems since I was young

But until today

Including just now

When I read poems

I still feel a kind of guilt

I think that guilt is

I don’t know what role poetry plays in this world

If there is war everywhere

If there is famine everywhere

If there is hate and murder between people everywhere

Then what could a poem save

I keep doubting what I do

When I knew that I had 18 minutes

To share the night of mid-autumn festival with some friends

I was wondering could people save 18 minutes

From a day of 24 hours for one poem

Then I thought it might still be a lavish

If I tell a friend in the work place who is busy all the time

To save 18 minutes for a poem everyday

I think he or she will still protest

So I concede

perhaps poetry is always conceding

Because it is unable to fight against anything

In the real world

So it concedes

So my compromise is that

Could we save 18 minutes for one poem

In an year of 365 days

And then I thought I concede again

Could it be 18 minutes for one poem

In a life time

Merely 18 minutes

But I think that’s enough

If you remember in that 18 minutes

You once saw in a spring

mountains devoured by the redness of Rhododendrons

I used to go there with my students often

it started in March or even February

The Rhododendrons of Yangmingshan

The whole mountain is red

There is another place that is very beautiful during May

The north face of Hehuanshan

It has Rhododendron rubropilosum Hayata

You can see the red mountain ridge

for several hundred meters long

My students often use lines

that I could never thought of to describe

He said, wow

The mountain is spitting blood

I couldn’t write something like that

I think the sentence is awesome

I believe there must be something in life

That could make him live with no regret

It is something like that which is crumbling and bleeding

There is an ancient story called The Cry of The Cuckoo

There was a lingering ghost of an emperor

it turns into a cuckoo bird

And it keeps on crying and crying

In the end the bird spat out blood

and dyed all the white flowers red

This is the story of the origin of Rhododendron

I always remember the spring Rhododendron

I witnessed several times on this island

I also once witnessed numerous rivers flowing downward

From the high point of this island

I lived in Dalongdong when I was young

It is on the shore of Tamsui River

We used to play in the Tamsui

But I knew along Tamsui

there is Dadaocheng above Dalongdong

Monga and Wanhua above Dadaocheng

Xindian Creek above Monga

And Beishi River above Xindian Creek

From the upper course going downwards

The river flows through a city

Now I live at its estuary at Bali

As if my life had come to the lower course too

But I think one’s life at the estuary

Has its own breadth

A river flows downward from a trickling creek

Passing Beishi River, Xindian Creek, Monga,

Dadaochen, Dalongdong and Shezi until the ocean

I believe the river has its own memory

So in the poem I read to you

There could be a Rhododendron bloomed in spring

Bloomed with no regret

Once there were numerous rivers

that flowed toward the one and only ocean

Once on Jibei Island of Penghu

The sands on the beach of Jibei is all white

Sands from eroded shells

On a night of full moon

When the moon is low

before dawn

When it’s almost dawn

All the stars shine in the sky

The student will grab you and yell

He didn’t talk about spitting blood this time

He couldn’t find any words

So he wept

I like seeing students weep

Because I believe they saw poetry

They will remember there were 18 minutes in their lives

Maybe it’s on the north face of Hehuanshan

Maybe it’s at the beach of Jibei

similarly

900 years ago there was a poet at this night wrote

When will the moon be clear and bright?

I asked the sky with a cup of wine in hand

Wonder what year it is in the palaces of heaven tonight

He is asking the moon

He wants to return to his home in heaven

We are too familiar with Su Dongpo’s Shui Diao Ge Tou

In the last part of the poem he says

There are different phases of moon

As there are different emotions of life

When I read this in high school textbook

Suddenly I realize

If a culture, a nation desires completeness so strongly

On 15th of January of the lunar calendar

is Yuanxiao Festival, Shangyuan Festival

The desire of roundness

On 15th of July there is the mid-summer ghost festival

You release water lanterns

To summon the stray spirits back

To share the warmth of the human world

And the mid-autumn festival

It is the time when the moon is complete and brightest in the year

I suddenly realized the desire of completeness

In Su Dongpo’s poem

When he wrote there are different phases of moon

It is only then I realize our desire for completeness

is because there are too much fragmentary

There are numerous fragmentary in our lives

We desire its completeness someday

I remember when I was young, the dining table we used was round

Once a French writer asked me in Paris

She studies comparative literature

Julia Christopher

She asked me

Why all your tables are round

She just got back from Asia at that time

I never thought of this question

I always thought that tables are round

But of course in Paris

the tables are mostly squares or rectangles

Rarely round

Then I realize roundness is a culture’s

Fight against fragmentary and incompleteness

It desires completeness so much

Even it’s transient, even it’s only 18 minutes

It still fights against fragmentary and incompleteness

in this mere 18 minutes

Too many conflicts

Too many wars

Too many exiles

The culture appreciates the desire of roundness

Anticipates the completeness

I think what we just mentioned about

The blooming of flower and the complete of moon

Is easily mocked as overly romantic

I think we actually have a kind of fear of poetry

The fear is to fall into a world of delusion

But I don’t agree

Poetry soothed numerous hearts in ordeal

As Ping Chu just explained the word compassion

I believe love is to share joy

And pain together

That’s why it is resonated across different cultures

What we meant by poetry could be the content I just read

But in literature we believe

Poetry is not just putting different words

together to convey certain meanings

In most early cultures

Poetry is not written down by words or seen by eyes

It is said by language and heard by the ears

Homer and Greek epics

Is sung with instruments

Mahabharata and Ramayana of India

Can be sung endlessly with 80 thousand lines

China’s classic of poetry is sung by illiterate men and women

That plow the land singing

The birds sing in the sand bar

It is more recent when it is organized into writing

We forgot how old our language is

We forgot our language

was once vibrations of love in the air

In the ancient times

I left at a time when the Salicaceae are green

Now I return at the time of rain and snow

The poem must be sung

For the people that is illiterate to hear the 16 words

To be moved by the heart

Therefore, what is called poetry by a nation

All started from sound rather than vision

It is aural

Because hearing is more connected to the heart than vision

There are so many bridges on the river of Seine

Every time I pass a bridge called Mirabeau

It reminds me of Apollinaire

A poet that writes in French in the early 20th century

Sous le pont Mirabeau coule la Seine Under the Mirabeau bridge flows the Seine

Et nos amours And our loves

Faut-il qu'il m'en souvienne Must I remember them

It doesn’t really matter if we know this language or not

Because its beau amours seine sienne vienne

Is all rhyming

Rhyme pattern ABAB

So the poem sounds like