Alive(Resurrection)

Men must slumber in the darkness

In order to be truly awaken

Men must be desperately lost

In order to look up at the endless stars

The young love to sing about death

While the old worship life like the sun

The young are hopeless on earth, dreaming of flight

The old fear to be parted from the land without a raging fight

Who wants to be from War and Peace

The Fly against the loft sky

But we are all just flies

Traceless, each life in a dream it lies

Always to be awakened, bringing nothing and taking nothing

Why must we seek truth in a dream?

If we will forget them when we finally open our eyes

With joy, with sorrow

We witness death

Just so we would strive to stay alive

But why are we alive?

To prepare us for what?

III

Is it just for that half asleep, half awake

Shadowy, faint, and veiled memory?

Is it possible that when we truly open our eyes one day

We would still feel all that we’ve felt in the dreams?

Yes, in my brief nightly drowsiness, I have felt

Despair and happiness

And existed so profoundly!

Slumber or Awake, Illusion or Truth

Reality or Dream

There never was any true death or an end

I was always

Alive Alive Alive

Life is the only route

Between nothingness and the endless

Our birth on earth, and our perishing to dirt

Are both equal ends for the existing

And fools will simply rejoice in the illusive brevity

While sages prepare for the everlasting dance

And fools will take comfort in the darkness obscuring his sins

While sages prepare for the brilliance of the yonder light

By already shining and basking in this life

I want to be from War and Peace

The Bee of such trivial and insignificant life

For we are all just bees

Unnoticed, but must exist

Why were we ever born to fly,

When true height is beyond this life?

Just for the pollen and nectar, taken and given?

Till bees return to the impermanent or the forever?

We will regret their absence then, bitterly and barrenly

Witnessing loss, just to learn to cherish

The existing.

But we exist, for what?

III

Is it just for that half asleep, half awake

Shadowy, faint, and veiled memory?

Is it possible that when we truly open our eyes one day

We would still feel all that we’ve felt in the dreams?

Yes, in my brief nightly drowsiness, I have felt

Despair and happiness

And existed so profoundly!

Slumber or Awake, Illusion or Truth

Reality or Dream

There never was any true death or an end

I was always

Alive Alive Alive

Conclusion:

Being alive

Is not just so we can die

That is completely meaningless

Being alive,

Is the only route

From nothingness to endlessness

Only having been once alive

Can you be resurrected

Only when you walk this road to the end

Will you find and continue the pave to the

Neverending Land

Request permission to use this poem

Written by

Yitkbel

33 / Toronto

Published: Oct 26, 2019
LinesWords: 83509

Notes: Alive (Resurrection)
By: Yue Xing Yitkbel ****
Original in Chinese written on:
Sunday, October 20, 2019, 6:20 PM
Translated on: Wednesday, October 23, 2019
11:43 AM
---
Notes written: 2019/10/25
This was originally another stream of consciousness written in Chinese in a much more organized lyric form spontaneously. Parts of it were a sort of commentary and reaction to poems, songs, and other works I read from both young and old, where the young tend to write about death with a fearless and almost welcoming embrace, and the old refuses to "go gentle into that goodnight."

The rest of it, I wanted to use two very striking metaphors from Tolstoy's War and Peace, the fly and a bee. I set up them as foils of one another, though both to signify insignificance; one represents the isolation of an individual, while the other is of the obscurity of the mass.

Both questions why are we alive? Why are we here just to leave so immediately? Then, both a revelation and answer came to me suddenly.

The revelation being life is the inevitable road between the nothingness of being, and the endlessness of being.
So the answer is, as this road seems to be the only and continuous road, we must cross it to the end of the section we call life, in order to reach the rest we call the neverending.
Tags: #theology #existentialism #existential #crisis

Permission

Request to use this poem

Tell Yitkbel how you would like to use it. We review requests before forwarding them.