White plum blossoms gently blew above my head,
As I read my book of verses under the moonlight;
Delicate wisps smoke coiled around me,
Lovingly like an evanescent snake,
I looked up to see a light that barely wavered,
Behind the smoke of a cigarette.
It was you, you came to me,
With a bottle of warm rice-wine
To complete the unfinished scenery
Of the moon, blossoms, lake and wine.
It hadn’t been too long since I met you,
I remember clearly how startled I was
To behold you in your singular beauty,
Standing between the shelves of old books,
Your back towards the window
Where a crescent moon hung, punctured,
By your magnificent head.
And I could not help mistaking you
For an enchanting lunar demon,
For I had never seen such beautiful black hair,
That shone like beaten silver in the moonlight.
And every night we would have conversations
By the windows of the silent reading hall.
Those long talks of solitude and insanity,
Of dark, restless, sleepless nights
Of moonlight weighing heavily on you
And I, promising to take the moonlight away
From the very moon I read my books under;
Tied us together with invisible strings
Till we had nothing to talk endlessly on.
One had to be careful with that silence,
It ate right into the darkness of the night
Till it imperceptibly swallowed us whole.
And now the library became lonely,
For all the nights to come.
But tonight, you wandered to me
In this sleepless, waking, sultry hour,
And tonight, I knew I would take liberties;
I would break through the chrysalis,
Of my broken dreams to savor you.
Your body stiffened against my hard breathing,
My fingers crept up, as if to taste what it felt like,
But you clasped my hand and sat us on the ferry.
Reclining, I stared down at the glassy surface of the sky
Picking up stars in cupped hands as the cicadas pined away.
For a moment I felt like adorning your hair with them,
But no, those stars shone too feebly to adorn
Your silvery, astral shock of hair reminiscent
Of numberless comets traversing the universes.
I let the stars slip through my loosened fingers,
Back to the alchemies of the dark, shifting cosmos
While you rowed us till we were in the midst
Of fireflies floating among the mists and water-lilies.
Oars vanish into the silent waters like wraiths;
Leaning on one side of the ferryboat you flash a smile
The next moment the boat is tipped.
I feel the water engulf and enter me,
I see you beside me, floating under the surface
Like a water-sprite, your arms around my shoulders.
I look up to see the surface above me glimmering silver
The water is warm, and comforting
I feel safe, oblivious but contented.
But before I sleep I must confess
That I do have just one regret:
All the poems that I have written,
Are all the ones that are no longer close to my heart
Which is why, I’ve committed them to paper.
The ones that matter to me, are locked safe in my heart
And that I carry more poems to my watery grave
Than the ones that have been papered.
And you, my demon, you,
Have taken me for yourself,
The best poem of all.