Lines from a Song by Jay Chou



The fallen maple leaves are like beads
of my yearning for you; why do we have
to clear this colourless landscape of them
before the coming of winter? I go back in time.

I let two droplets of my tears from this
season’s end to remain, so my love too remains,
here within the empty topography of my heart:
How I wish you could stay beside me always.

In Scattered Birdsong
(Or the Dreamer Always Loses)



You’d been fighting with him
for almost every day the past month:
he said he still loved you but wanted things
to be more open, whereas you threatened
to walk out on him altogether.

Just this morning you thought
you heard in the intricate song of the oriole
that a decision had to be made.
The signs for it, it seemed,
were all present to seek resolution.

So you skip having lunch with your colleagues
to hurry back home to send him word,
skipping over the terracotta stones
past the front door of your apartment,
past the living room to tell him

you’ve decided to stay,
and that your love still endures
even if it had to be shared with strangers
you’ll never meet. But no amount
of celluloid cliché could prepare you

for the next unconcealed moment,
not the many Korean dramas about love
and family honour you’d watched with him,
and surely not the Gol and Gincu series
in all its innocence.

What you saw was just blatant melodrama:
your Pilates instructor humping your partner
(who has his ankles to his ears),
and a smile of unsanctioned ecstasy
written all over their faces.


__________________________________________________________
It seems that it’s the dreamer that usually gets hurt in a relationship whereas the one more in touch with reality gets away quite unblemished.