Course:Yuzhen
| CRWR 501P 003 |
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| Advanced Writing of Poetry |
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Yuzhen
This is the title of a song, which was later choreographed into a contemporary dance by one of my pole instructors. The band Fulushou (consisting of three sisters) had composed the lyrics/music in memory of their grandmother, whose name was Yuzhen. The lyrics can roughly be translated into:
See how the wind tousles her hair,
and pulls her shadow apart.
If only she would take me along,
even if it be in vain.
She says there’s a jewel in her heart,
to be protected at all costs.
So as I take off with the wind,
I won’t let my feet touch the ground.
The wind has risen, it’s time to go back.
Look, look, all of the past is right here.
How brilliant is that big wide world,
only, only, I will never find you again.
I will go to that big wide world too.
Wait, wait for me once I clear this path, I’ll be on my way.
Still I drink her jasmine tea,
still I sing her cherished songs.
Until her sorrows become mine
then her graces would be mine too.
The wind rises… the wind rises…
Would you ride through the night,
brave storm and sea to arrive in my dreams?
See how the wind tousles my hair,
I know that you are right here.
The next time I see you in the light of spring
Don’t you leave me behind again.
I had cried (I still do sometimes) every time I listened to this song. It made me think of my own grandmother – who is alive and well – and the what-if scenarios. What would I do if she is missing from my life. How would I live? And this song became almost unbearable for me because of the instant tears that welled up in my eyes. It became like a sin: to think of someone as dead when they’re living.
In dancing to this song, the choreographer shed a new light to my understanding. It wasn’t about the commemoration and grief that she wanted to express. Rather it was hope and strength. It is the hope that the dead wishes for the living to have, to carry on with being alive in face of loss and grief. It’s about living with the hope of others, and the strength to hope that everyone – alive or dead – will come together again, and that these momentary goodbyes are only markers on a circle. Our paths will cross again.
Perhaps it was her choreographed moves that didn’t have much correlation with the lyrics that made me rethink this ordeal. In a beautiful and non-verbal way, this links back to my thinking of content and form. In the end, the two don’t have to mirror the other. A dance is incomplete without music, but can also be – in terms of lyric – independent of the music. Would the same apply to poetry? Can my words in a poem be independent of their original meaning, now that they’re strung together in different manners?
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