Yu Guangzhong's "Winter Solstice" (余光中的『冬至』)

It's Winter Solstice today. We had an early release of all our staff. But it was not only a release of our staff. It was also my own release. I could comb through the poems of Yu Guangzhong freely again to find something to match the festive sentiment, and go a little way toward meeting a request by one of my fellow bloggers. I found one. It's called Winster Solstice. The poem and the translation follows.

          冬至                                                  Winter Solstice

想了很久都不能决定              Thought a long while but couldn't decide

最別致的一張聖誕卡               How to trim for you

應怎樣來為你剪裁                   A beautiful Christmas card

直到冬至那一天，我說           Until the day of Winter Solstice, I said

對了，便沿著浪花的花邊       Yes, then cut out the spacious seaview of Saichi Bay

剪大西子灣空曠的海景         along the foamy edges of the waves

正面，是今年最短的一日        Yes,  it's the shortest day of the year 

---在壯麗的下端                       ---at the lower end of grandeur

紅艶艶印著一枚夕陽                the red red sunset in print 

反面，是今年最長的一夜        No, it's the longest night of the year

---在寂寞的上端                       --at the upper end of loneliness 

銀晃晃貼著一籤冷月                the silvery silvery chilly moon stuck

而橫在壯麗和寂寞的中間       midway atride grandeur and loneliness.

我的思念是燒煉的晚霞           My thoughts homed in on the burnished dusk

這一切，幾何學最妙的設計   All this, the most subtle design of geometry

天文學最精確的安排               the most precise arrangement of astronomy

直到平安夜的前四天               Was not found until

頓然才發現，卻已經               four days afore Christmas Eve, but oh,

唉，來不及郵寄給你了           it's far too late to be posted to you.

                                                                                           (25.12. 1988)

As stated, this is a creation by the poet on Christmas day of 1988. It's written in an almost colloquial style but not entirely. We can find a whole series of balances and equivalences. But the balance serves only to set into relief the contrasts, the movement of oppositions: postive/negative, sun/moon, day/night, long/short, geometry/astronomy, early/late, Eastern festival/Western festival. The images range from those related to space to those related to time. The language range from the colloquial to the more formal, from prose to prosy poetry.

Have a happy family union whether according to Chinese customs or as a pre-Christmas family reunion!