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
Repost:
For all hungry and thirsty soul searching for eternity.
By: Yitkbel Yue Xing ****
Translated from original Chinese Lyric that was originally translated and adapted from my English poem: “Terror of Good, Emptiness of Plenty”
Original date of Chinese version: November 3, 2019 18:55
Date of New English translation: November 5, 2019 15:04
