I loved | Louise Glück's poems·Fragments of my life

Sep 2, 2023

In fact, there has always been a river in my hometown, but I didn’t know how to open my eyes and believe in myself.

<Nostos>
As one expects of a lyric poet.
We looked at the world once, in childhood.
The rest is memory.

I have never considered myself a "poet", but poetry is a way for me to express myself; at the same time, I also read the world through poetry. In fact, since childhood, I have started to write some small poems, which have no rhyme or rhythm, but they are the way I chose to express my feelings at that time. The first seven-character rhymed poem was written when I came back from Lushan Mountain in Jiujiang, Jiangxi Province. At that time, I had just caught up with the "once-in-a-hundred-year" flood in 1998. As a child from the north, I saw the flooded farmland for the first time. It seems that I still remember it. There are slow-moving buffaloes. When I went home and watched TV, I saw that Jiang Zemin had gone to the front lines to fight the floods. However, after returning from the hardest-hit area on the "front lines", all I could think of was "the sun shines on the incense burner and the purple smoke rises, and I see the waterfall Kagemae River in the distance." Rivers, lakes and seas were in my childhood. It doesn't exist, I only know land and dryness. Louise Glück wrote, We poets took one look at the world in childhood, and the rest is memory .

I thought about going to a place with water when I grow up, because my mother said that cities without water are so pitiful. More than thirty years later, I heard the lyrics of Angela Chang singing, " Children take away all wishes from the hands of adults/ / Don’t let anyone want it / She will forgive when she grows up / Beautiful lies in fairy tales ”, I realized that I had come a long way, but not a single corner was chosen by me .

In the days after I turned eighteen, I, who came from a dry city, tried every means to let the rivers and lakes follow me, from the confluence of the mighty Jialing River and the three rivers all the way south to the clear water and blue sky of Hong Kong and the glamorous Macau. Later, when I opened my eyes, I looked like what I saw when I was a child. The magazine is floating on the Dead Sea. There is so much water, so much salt, and such a big world. It is really interesting when you are in your teens or 20s. You are still a child and you are growing up, but you can completely forget what you loved as a child - I threw away the poem .

Glück wrote in "Child Cry Out",

The soul is silent.
If it speaks at all
it speaks in dreams.

I have never written a poem in a dream, and I have never even cried in a dream. It turns out that I can live like this for decades, bringing my deaf-mute soul into my dreams. Even in my dreams, no matter how I scream, I can’t make a sound because no one in this world has ever heard my cry.

Glück asks again in "The Garden",

and they think
they are free to overlook
this sadness.

I cried and stopped crying. I thought I had become the three-headed and six-armed Naza, able to withstand everything, but I forgot that Naza "removes the bones to return to the father, and cuts off the flesh to return to the mother." However, if it were as simple as Na Zha, maybe people who choose to self-mutilate would not cut so many knives one after another. The older I get, the deeper my longing for home becomes, and I realize that the home I always wanted never existed. There are piles of debris, accusations, and my mother telling me over and over again, "You hurt me." I never understand. I think I have tried hard enough, but why do I keep hurting my mother? It’s like I’ve been carrying a big stone of original sin since I was born, it’s so heavy.

Glück wrote in "Portland, 1968":

It doesn't matter
who the witness is.
for whom you are suffering,
for whom you are standing still.

It was me, carrying the pain of my parents’ marriage, and struggling to move forward as a result of this marriage. Every step of the way, my mother told me that I was hurting her. Suddenly, overnight, I didn’t want to leave. I want to give this life back to my mother, and give it back to her forever. I also told my mother this, but she still repeated the words "I hurt her". Mom said, "Every time you come home, your dad treats me badly." So, let me really choose for once - I will never go home.

My family doctor, my psychiatrist, my lover, my friends, everyone told me, don’t go, don’t leave this world, we all need you. Only my parents didn't try to save me.

How many nights and how many days have I heard my mother biting words in my ear, saying——

if I am in her head forever
I am in your life forever.
——<Circe's Grief>

GET OUT!

If you don't leave my world, I will leave this world!

In fact, I am still stupid. When have my cries and threats ever worked on my parents?

My mother will always live in my mind, whether I open or close my eyes; day or night. Unless I stop this, forever.

However, I met poetry, and I read "The Golden Apple Tree" by Louise Glück:

<Quince Tree>
In the end, we didn't need to ask. Because
we felt the past; it was, somehow,
in these things, the front lawn and back lawn,
suffusing them, giving the little quince tree
a weight and meaning almost beyond enduring.
~~
The weather. The quince tree.
You, in your innocence, what do you know of this world?

This poem takes me back to Jerusalem. In the Old City of Jerusalem, a group of us stopped to taste the store’s quince jam, which was delicious. As a traveling translator, I don’t know how to translate quince, and I have never seen this fruit. She looked it up quietly and then told me that it was called wēn bò. Since then, these two words have never escaped my mind. Many years ago, I saw Ayumi Hamasaki at the place owned by her family. At that time, I never thought that "new people's lives" could be on the same track and connected in any unexpected way. Her figure and smile seemed to be telling me - look, do you have to leave this world?

<Dream of Lust>
the human body a compulsion, a magnet,
the dream itself obstinately
clinging, the spirit
helpless to let it go --
it is still not worth
losing the world.

Do you think the Bible and poetry are incompatible? But I would like to go back to Jerusalem and sit next to the woman playing the harp and read a poem and write a poem.

<The Jacob's Ladder>
And at the end, what? A small blue flower
like a star. Never
to leave the world! Is this
not what your tears mean?

Louise Glück effortlessly presented the world with her poems that touched my heart the most. As I slowly settled, I realized that the world is so beautiful. Of course, I regretted the few notes I stuffed in front of the Wailing Wall. There is no wish for another poem.

<Echoes>
if your soul died, whose life
are you living and
when did you become that person?

Naturally, I wonder, who am I, and if I am never allowed to be myself, who am I about to get back?

In fact, there has always been a river in my hometown, but I didn’t know how to open my eyes and believe in myself.

"First Memory" by Louise Glück is a very famous poem. It is short and concise and should be able to resonate with most readers——

FIRST MEMORY
Long ago, I was wounded. I lived
to revenge myself
against my father, not
for what he was --
for what I was: from the beginning of time,
in childhood, I thought
that pain meant
I was not loved.
It meant I loved.

I, too, loved it.