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