The Metaphysical Dancer:
A Wintry Waltz of Being

By: Yitkbel Yue Xing ****
Original Chinese version written: Tuesday, January 28, 2020
Translated: Wednesday, January 30, 2020 12:41 a.m.

The way through eternity
The road of souls
From the invisible shapeless
Unto the invisible shapeless
As if an unseen dancer in winter
Slowly putting on layers of snow
Fleeting timely coats

A layer of consciousness
A layer of memories
A layer of stardust
A layer of flesh and blood
Gradually a form manifests
Gradually a self manifests
Till we see life
Till we see change
Till we see death

Everything, every gain and every loss
Everything, every birth and every demise
Awareness, being, time, and death
Will eventually fade, seep, melt away
Leaving only the invisible shapeless dancer
Invisible and shapeless as ever
Still dancing
Till eternity

If the beginning and end were
If the beginning and end are
If the beginning and end will always be
An enlightening everlasting dream
Why must we wake for a fleeting
Indivisible blink
Experiencing all the clashes and separation
Experiencing all the love and hatred
Seemingly meaninglessly brief good
Seemingly meaninglessly brief evil

I can't take away these words
I can't take away these memories
I can't take away any fragment of your being
With me
But I must have stolen a trace of your soul
A trace of your light
Hiding them within
Within me
Within my soul
Here and there we clash
Creating the sparks
That lit up heaven
That warmed up the sky

Is it thus
Is it thus
Is it thus
For us to long for home
We must wander to the afar
Life
Consciousness
Being
Time
Death
As our lost souls drift
As our lost souls drift
As our lost souls drift
We long for the eternal home beyond


The way through eternity
The road of souls
From the invisible shapeless
Unto the invisible shapeless
We will all eventually shed the snow
And continue our dance unseen
As the earthly melt away

Melt away the consciousness
Melt away the memories
Melt away the stardust
As the flesh and blood decay
Slowly the form fades
Slowly the soul manifests
Till we lose all the changes
Till we lose all the losses
Till we lose all the death

Everything, every gain and every loss
Everything, every birth and every demise
Awareness, being, time, and death
Will eventually fade, seep, melt away
Leaving only the invisible shapeless dancer
Invisible and shapeless as ever
Still dancing
Till eternity

If the beginning and end were
If the beginning and end are
If the beginning and end will always be
An obscured everlasting dream
Do we really gain nothing when we return to slumber?
Not even the warmth in our souls
Brought on by the melting of the snow?
Or the eternal folds and faults
Scars and bumps that altered the shape of our core
From all of our profound encounters and collisions
With each other?

I can't take away these words
I can't take away these memories
I can't take away any fragment of your being
With me
But I must have stolen a trace of your soul
A trace of your light
Hiding them within
Within me
Within my soul
Here and there we clash
Creating the sparks
That lit up heaven
That warmed up the sky

So it is thus
So it is thus
So it is thus
For us to shine even brighter
We must temporarily be
Life
Consciousness
Being
Time
Death
Let our parted souls combine
Let our parted souls combine
Let our parted souls combine
Embracing ever more brilliantly beyond

When the snow melts away
When I return to the eternal place
When I forget time, being and space
Blissfully, unknowingly dancing familiar moves of nameless grace
The twinges of lightning
From the marks of existing
Will remind me of our inseparable timely days

As it is thus
As it is thus
As it is thus
For us to truly cherish the hereafter
The place above decay and matter
We must experience
Life
Consciousness
Being
Time
Death
So our witless souls would remember
So our witless souls would remember
So our witless souls would remember
Only love that could palpitate in dreams
Transcend matter
Matters
And
Would never be forgotten

I'm the dreamer who reaps eternity.

If thou knowest not what could be known
How could thou be wise to the unknowable?
Instead of the fulfilment of wisdom
Plentiful, with golden overlooked fields of wheat
They hunger for the unquenchable faint stars
And gain not the warmth of heaven's retreat
But the stoic cold indifference of heavens afar
So
In the barren I'm destined to be
All of antiquity granted to me
A callow child sowing wizened words
Lo and behold as they grow unobscured
Wild and free
As only TRUTH after sifts of time remains
To be resown
In fertile old earth and as new seed
And
In the harvest
The fruits of
What is rooted to eternity
Will be reaped

Child
Don't fear the silence
Feel alive as you hear your heart beating
Don't shun your doubts, emptiness, uncertainty
You must have the wavering void of darkness
To hold a dream
That is not devoid of
Wonder
Unwavering indefatigable wonder

Is there an unknown quiet hidden prophecy
Clawing to be freed from deep within
An instinct with the shape of my shied soul
As swallows yearning for the sure south
I had danced with the same faith of finding
My wings a thousand quills across the keys
Praying the given words and ebbing melodies
In waltzing secrecy may show me
And let me hear, let me see, let me be

The sound of cherubim’s laughter in the wind
The rain and darkening clouds soothing
Hearts weary of ennui beneath languid sun
Minds anticipating enlightenment of dawn
And souls waiting, silently, patiently for my song

All the woes wake the sweetness of being
As the bitterness of ale cradles dreams
I could rise higher than if I'd never fallen
There must be darkness for stars to be seen

This must be my destiny
All these lost ways and wandering
This must be my destiny
I can hear whence the world stops singing
This must be my destiny
To mark wayward path without markings
This must be my destiny
I can still see whence light only modestly reigns
In the desert, to the gazer, heavens will finally reveal
What were, are and will be
Like a dream, timeless they'll tell me
Everything

Do you feel the pull before you see the star
Just as your light is here before you are
For I can sense a force of glory leading me far
Beyond the great earth of ashes and dust
As if the gate guarding my dreams is ajar
A stray light is peeking through the dark
A rung of the ladder, shadows mark
A feather falls, a sleeve caught
The blade of light points the path

The winding green path that hides the valley
The crown of oak that shields the bard
Sunshine too harsh for young hearts
Shadow coveted by dreamers of love
Yearning to reunite beyond time and space afar

Just as quietness calls for sweet longings
The sailors they drift to slumber against tidings
Seedlings must breathe without canopy foliage
While shadow shelters depth of life within the sea

So
Child
Don't fear the silence
Feel alive as you hear your heart beating
So
Child
Don't shun your doubts, emptiness, uncertainty
You must have the wavering void of darkness
To hold a dream
That is not devoid of
Wonder
Unwavering indefatigable wonder

Traversing ceaselessly
Through
The dawn of silence and dusk of uncertainty
Unto the undying fields of ancient wisdom
I am the dreamer who reaps eternity

The Beginning and the End

(Introduction and Conclusion):


The withering maples, the fallen skylark
The plagued leaves, the forsaken bees
Are warning us that we are not only
Losing our depth, but also our earth
The sun, and our ways
When love is great, greater than the sea
We fear it the most, afraid to be lost in the waves

It shall not fade away, the eternity will always stay
Yet, Yet we build our haven with materialistic bricks
To hide away from the fear of losing
And look down upon culture and souls as a foolish faith
Not realizing, all that can be weathered away
Will be weathered away, broken down, to decay
Then, swept away, by the temporal waves

And those that belong in the eternal place
And those that seek for truth within this maze
If they ever find it or are found by it
They will shine, shine under the sun of everlasting rays

If all these endless roads are only for the incomer
To prepare for the end of the road, the end of our ways
Telling them that within this cycle of brevity
The road will end just a few short steps away
Would it be more rational to not arrive, or stay
Surely, we seek truth to find guidance to the pave
And continue our lives
In that painless, lossless
Place


Verse:


When we are still combating evil
With our guns and metals of empathy
Another far more vicious and shapeless foe
Has suddenly and quietly sneaked up behind us  
So that on our search for the truth
We are being suffocated by the abundance

It seems like we are being surrounded
By two different but equally hideous enemies
But are we the only innocent ones?
Are we innocent?
The sky is veiled by the autumn shade of change
Perhaps, we couldn’t see clearly who’s who
Behind the mask of foliage
Couldn’t see what is truly happening
To this new age

Pre-Chorus:

The red leaves gently fall
Covering their visages
Till we are deluded by the illusion
A fool with dusty tattered cloaks, scythe in hand
A knight shimmering like gold, staff in command
But what hides behind this nature’s disguise
Which of them is our friend which is the foe
Is one warm in clothes but cold in his soul?
The humble one cherishes his blades for harvesting
The boastful crushes with his plenty, baton of pain

Bridge:

All hungry and thirsty souls
All bodies filled with emptiness
Just want to be filled, filled with whatever will stay
And stay, peaceful without the prospect of abandonment and fading away

Chorus:

We wish, we pray, we
Won’t be washed away
Be forgotten, perish away
Why climb for the summit
If we must fall to a nameless grace?
Why can’t we just stay unborn?
If we can’t bear life’s lightness or weight?
Perhaps, I’ll never understand my place
But within the pondering and hopelessness

I woke up
And realize that truly:
Only Love transcends time and space
The embrace between two condensed hearts
Of pure longing could exert
The gravity
And gravitational time dilation
Of such self-forgetful density
That would wrap entire fabrics of reality
Around us, immersing us, with brief
Merciful revelations and trials
Of the unfathomable
Eternity

Verse:

The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire
Should not have been for us so near and dire
Only a couple of generations, only a couple of decades
We are already lost between unrest and the barren
The wavelength of boom and bust becoming exponentially shorter
So that before a man has fully dug himself out of the mud
He is already returning to ashes and dust

Within the ocean of impermanence and uncertainty
We quickly raise the good lumber
And then just as efficiently push it back down
Till we are more like volcanic rocks
With so many holes floating, to ask to be filled
And when fulfilled, drown as we fill, purposeless
And empty  

Pre-Chorus

Hungry or at peace is sometimes the same
We are equally empty and anxious
We aren’t necessarily searching for more
Like Milan Kundera said,
What we can bear the least is
“The Unbearable Lightness of Being”

The children joyously rush towards the summit
And pushes down the monolith that crushed them
Without realizing an invisible rope connects all
So that all who wishes to reach the top
Must also fall through and brace the ground

Bridge:

All hungry and thirsty souls
All bodies filled with emptiness
Just want to be filled, filled with whatever will stay
And stay, peaceful without the prospect of abandonment and fading away

Chorus:

We wish, we pray, we
Won’t be washed away
Be forgotten, perish away
Why climb for the summit
If we must fall to a nameless grace?
Why can’t we just stay unborn?
If we can’t bear life’s lightness or weight?
Perhaps, I’ll never understand my place
But within the pondering and hopelessness
I woke up
And realize that truly:
Only Love transcends time and space
The embrace between two condensed hearts
Of pure longing could exert
The gravity
And gravitational time dilation
Of such self-forgetful density
That would wrap entire fabrics of reality
Around us, immersing us, with brief
Merciful revelations and trials
Of the unfathomable
Eternity

The Beginning and the End
(Introduction and Conclusion)

The withering maples, the fallen skylark
The plagued leaves, the forsaken bees
Are warning us that we are not only
Losing our depth, but also our earth
The sun, and our ways
When love is great, greater than the sea
We fear it the most, afraid to be lost in the waves

It shall not fade away, the eternity will always stay
Yet, Yet we build our haven with materialistic bricks
To hide away from the fear of losing
And look down upon culture and souls as a foolish faith
Not realizing, all that can be weathered away
Will be weathered away, broken down, to decay
Then, swept away, by the temporal waves

And those that belong in the eternal place
And those that seek for truth within this maze
If they ever find it or are found by it
They will shine, shine under the sun of everlasting rays

Before love, I cower and languish
As silence binds me till heavens’ end
I give and offer permanence and eternity
Ceaseless as cataracts of falling stars
Roaring through the desolation, stubborn gale
Bringing forth hope as wild seeds sprout
Tide after tide of suffocating plenty

All to plead for:

A blink from the indifferent sun
A sigh from the depth of the void
A smile from you

And receive nothing.

Still, my faith is true:

As swallows in wintry plight flock
To seek the prophesied warm south
As salmon race towards life's autumn
Leap or lapse, always to land in its fall

Like the many hapless before
And
The destined countless after

It is also my instinct to seek
To love
Even if I never find
And only the eternal quiet echoes my calls


Heaven remains when heavens end
While Earth cease where earth ends
You and I did not spring the same
Yet, if one withers the other will surely fade

Introduction:
The Young Poet’s Dreams:

I often dream of the ocean
Dream of the sea
I've been waking up to a longing
Longing for the land
The land of my birth
South of the Clouds
North of the sea
Not bordering either
But close and very near
To the heavens and the world

Overlooked by progress
But not by history
Nature, and life
I was ungrateful of having fallen behind
Though I was still deeply moved
By the primitive nature and land
Still fully alive,
Green as the winding rivers
Firm as its sheltering boulders
This must be a proximity to
The truth I seek
The timelessness I seek


Chorus of Epiphany:


Yes,
There must be Truth
In the unchanged and unchanging
Evergreen, and restlessly flowing
Rituals and rites kept alive
Thousands of years despite
Time, and the forsaken everything

Were the Truth and the eternal
Timeless, and the Faraway
Always so close
To home?


The Eternalist Dream:


Is this the source and origin of
My nightly and whimsical nautical dreams
The fact that I was born near the land
Of ancient and now lost shallow seas

Am I called by the truth, unchanged
In giant columns of limestone
Still marked by waves from near-eon ago
Though we can no longer see them
In Eternalism, the ocean still wavers
As truly as my footprints curved by
The flow of all objects of time and space
As truly as the countless unseeable me
Navigating through life and existence
Bearing all that is forever timeless
Unacknowledged for it is unseen
Through each step taken and each
Subtle yet unmistakable movement
Create a new and continuous ‘to be’
With all of me floating along the unseen

Yet
Fully alive and eternal shallow sea


Chorus of Epiphany:


Yes,
There must be Truth
In the unchanged and unchanging
Evergreen, and restlessly flowing
Rituals and rites kept alive
Thousands of years despite
Time, and the forsaken everything

Were the Truth and the eternal
Timeless, and the Faraway
Always so close
To home?


The Mythical Dream:


It lives on in familiar words and songs
And not just silently carved in stones
To be felt by the more sentient and aware
And ignored by those occupied by more
Present and timely tangible indulgences
Guided by the elders' tales and melodies
The distant dream of purer lives and love
Manifests in this child's untamed heart
Yet searching for a world different to
This mundane and subdued reality
Each stone shadowed with the spirit
Suggestive of a more petrified golem
Granted by even a hint of heads and torsos
Were given a name from myths not stranger
To a young soul lured by the allure of fables
And so an Eastern Stone metamorphosis
Of the Yi Legend of Ashima who turned into
The famed stone still standing proudly
Among the stone forest after being forbidden
A loyal union with her most unbetraying love
Burst into life full of every sung voice and color
Leading the way for the lithic pilgrimage
Of the mythical monk of the "Journey to the West"
They too live on unchanged and unchanging
Through every weathered stone yet standing

Through every named word kept repeating
Through every ancient myth ever recalling
Kept alive and from disappearing
In every child’s
Dreams


Chorus of Epiphany:


Yes,
There must be Truth
In the unchanged and unchanging
Evergreen, and restlessly flowing
Rituals and rites kept alive
Thousands of years despite
Time, and the forsaken everything

Were the Truth and the eternal
Timeless, and the Faraway
Always so close
To home?


The Human Dream:


Ancient tongues often remain unwritten
And even those like the pictographic Dongba
Though befriending my childlike curiosity
Still remain stranger to my understanding
So only vaguely am I acquainted with
The varied rites, rituals, celebrations
Of the people keeping alive the unchanged
Words, traditions, dresses, and mythology
Ever one with nature, the elements, universal
Some dance in the darkness with torches
Others duel playfully with water under tropic sun
Like my childhood dreams of a too optimistic world
Their dresses and symbols, from ox to peacocks
Remain ever hopeful, and full of living colors
Truly, what comprehension do I really need?
When the earth’s heart beats in unison with
Their thundering dance sung with bare feet
When they hand you horns of sweet rice wine
Inviting you to a far more intoxicating dream
You only need to understand and accept
What you can evidently feel and surely see
The unchanging and unchangeable joy
So pure and kind, that will forever,
Perhaps thankfully overlooked by progress,
Timelessly remain.


Chorus of Epiphany:


Yes,
There must be Truth
In the unchanged and unchanging
Evergreen, and restlessly flowing
Rituals and rites kept alive
Thousands of years despite
Time, and the forsaken everything

Were the Truth and the eternal
Timeless, and the Faraway
Always so close
To home?


Conclusion:


It must be,
For in my nautical
Waking and asleep
Eternalist, Mythic, Human Dreams

It calls restlessly to me
From my birth, through its continuation
I’ve risen and gazed upon the violently
Violet obscure and cloudy night sky
And felt a great fear crushing down
Upon this child of an ever searching soul

I was afraid,
I will never KNOW
And know what,
I did not know

I have felt something stirring
Yet, all greatness seemed
Unreachable, unseeable
Undreamable like the hidden stars

I loved the winding rivers between earthen boulders
I loved the rainforest sacred as its wild elephants
I love the stalagmites caves and the dormant volcanoes

Yet, always longing for an unfamiliar faraway
More moved by progress and not overlooked
I was never aware, until now
The truth timeless and unchanging
Though now slow uncovering
That was always
At
HOME

An initial burst of all of life
Light and its lack thereof
Brilliant spheres clash and combine
A Titanomachy of the heavens

A man and his rib, serpent and fruits
Being and consciousness, in choosing
The poison one picked, its effects hereditary
Awareness was forever won, with death carried

To escape the great flood
Limps and torsos, ashes and dust
After time, baring the great black mud
Black as the Raven that returned, not

White as the dove that returned, to Noah
White as the east flag that bore a warning
A warning against the cunning snake
That will soon become Totem of the Dragon

As all hungry bodies search for a new land
A new land of great plenty and distinction
Four beings arrived on this new world of old
Of mountains and valleys, and ancient sea

Bore two lives that soon combined into me:
I was oft called in terror by the violet nights
And a white dove in azule trinket appeared
I even held the shedding snake in yesteryears

I held my gaze to the sky and felt ever close
To the wonders unseen, unsaid but promised
In silence and unmistakable feelings to me, till
I am safely grounded by the faraway unearthly

I was instilled with the desperation for greatness
But only ordinary quietness gave me any peace
Why, through all of creation did I arrive with
So unsteady and vague sense of mission

And why did I ever so gladly indulge and suffer
Through all of the joy, loneliness, and ailments
Just for this impractical soul to deeply dwell
Ceaseless upon a naive idealism of words

Still, I mustn't've passed by life, just to leave
Still, I mustn't've woken in life, just as a dream
I feel something brewing profoundly within
What and when, I know not of, but it will be

Perhaps I am not yet ready
But I am forever waiting
One day, I will reach the end of this shadow cave
And having accustomed to light already, I will see

Understand,
Without fear, and pain
Everything

Like the initial burst of all of life
Light and lack thereof, will combine
And become of one mind with me
The Perfect Circle of Being Complete