Night Song Of A Wandering Asian Shepherd
(trans. Alan Marshfield)
What do you do,
moon, aloft? Let me know
what, silent
moon, you do.
You rise each
night; you go;
you contemplate
the deserts; then you sleep.
Do you not have
your fill
of ever ranging never-changing
scenes?
Do you not loathe
returning, are you still
eager for these
ravines?
The shepherd's
life to him
is like your
life. Each morning
he rises at first
dawning:
moves on his
flocks to other fields, beholds
more flocks,
spring water, grasses;
then drops
exhausted at the end of day:
expects no other
way.
Say, moon, what
can be found
of worth in life
to him
and to you in
your life? where does it lead,
this transient
drift of mine
and your eternal
round?
Wizened,
white-haired and broken,
barefoot and clad
in rags,
a load, the
heaviest, strung on his back,
by hill and
valley track,
on knife-edged
stones, through thickets, knee-deep sand,
in wind and
tempest, when the hour of day
is oven-hot - or
freezes,
he goes, goes on
and wheezes,
fords waterfalls
and bogs,
falling and
rising, always stumbling on,
not resting to
take food,
till lacerated,
bleeding, he at last
arrives at where
the path
and where his
painful efforts have been leading:
a vast and horrid
chasm
in which he
plunges to oblivion.
Such, lunar
chastity,
is life -
mortality.
The life of man
is labour;
just to risk
dying is his lifeblood lent him.
He learns what
will torment him
among the first
things; his progenitors,
mother and
father, start
consoling him for
birth in their contrition.
Then, as he comes
to grow,
one and the other
help him. Ceaselessly
in utterance and
act
they try to give
him heart,
console him for
his human destiny.
Parents do well
to see
for offspring
there is no more seemly pact.
Why bring to
light, in fact;
why ever keep
alive
one who must be
consoled for having life?
If living has no
cure
why do we so
endure?
Moon, unassailed
by touch,
mortality is
such.
But, since you
are not mortal,
words do perhaps
not move you overmuch.
You in eternal,
lonely pilgrimage
must be aware, as
pensively you go,
of earth-life,
what it is,
how we plod
sighing as in pain we bend; -
also what dying
is, the ultimate
diminishing of
features,
how here the case
is each man perishes
from off the
earth, from every loving friend.
Certain it is you
know
the why of
things, for you behold the fruit
of evening and of
morn,
the silent,
endless, passing-by of time.
You know, you,
for whom in her delight
the smiles of
spring are born,
whom the heat
betters, and for what device
the wintertime
brings ice.
A thousand things
you know, a thousand find,
which are from
simple shepherds held from sight.
Often when I
observe
your silent stay
above the empty plain,
whose far rim
gives the sky apparent bounds;
when with my
flock I see
you dog my steps
- with slow and steady gain;
when I watch
stars burn in celestial heights;
a voice speaks in
my mind:
Wherefore so many
lights?
For what the
sky's infinity, for what
the deep,
non-finite air? What signifies
this solitude
immense? And what am I?
Converse I with
myself so: of the chambers
unmeasured and
superb,
and of the kin
unnumbered they contain;
but in so much
activity and motion
of all those
things above, and here below,
that with no
resting go,
always returning
to where they began;
no use or benefit
in them I see.
But you must without doubt,
immortal maiden,
know the truth of it.
This do I feel
and know:
that from the
endless gyres
and from my
fragile pain
some profit or
content
others may have.
To me life is a bane.
My flock at rest,
how great your happiness:
I do not think
you know your misery!
How much I envy
you!
Not just because
you go
as if completely
free,
and every strain
and blow -
and every terror
- you at once forget;
but more because
you do not suffer boredom.
When you upon the
grass sit in the shade,
you are content
and quiet,
existing mostly
so
without distress
a great part of the year.
When I sit in the
shade upon the grass
thick clouds of
torpor pass
across my mind,
and pangs as from a spur.
Thus from me,
supine, ever more deferred
is any peaceful
base.
Yet nothing I
desire
and cause for
grief had I none until late.
What joy is
yours, how great,
I know not, but
the gods to you are good.
For me joy has no
place,
nor, flock of
mine, only at this I sorrow.
For if you understood
I would ask why a
beast
which lies down
lazily
is calm,
fulfilled and blest,
while tedium
engulfs me when I rest.
Were wings to
elevate
my soul above the
clouds
to number off the
stars spread everywhere;
or could I like
the thunder roam the crags;
I would be
happier, oh sweet flock, I would
be happier, moon,
whose whiteness rules the air.
Or would truth
deviate
at thought of
other beings and their fate?
Perhaps whatever
state
life may be born
to, in a croft or lair,
the time of birth
is a funereal date.
From: BrinDin Press Online