Noontime

It is noontime, Senlin says. The sky is brilliant

Above a green and dreaming hill.

I lay my trowel down. The pool is cloudless,

The grass, the wall, the peach-tree, all are still.

It appears to me that I am one with these:

A hill, upon whose back are a wall and trees.

It is noontime: all seems still

Upon this green and flowering hill.

Yet suddenly out of nowhere in the sky,

A cloud comes whirling, and flings

A lazily coiled vortex of shade on the hill.

It crosses the hill, and a bird in the peach-tree sings.

Amazing! Is there a change?

The hill seems somehow strange.

It is noontime. And in the tree

The leaves are delicately disturbed

Where the bird descends invisibly.

It is noontime. And in the pool

The sky is blue and cool.

Yet suddenly out of nowhere,

Something flings itself at the hill,

Tears with claws at the earth,

Lunges and hisses and softly recoils,

Crashing against the green.

The peach-tree braces itself, the pool is frightened,

The grass-blades quiver, the bird is still;

The wall silently struggles against the sunlight;

A terror stiffens the hill.

The trees turn rigidly, to face

Something that circles with slow pace:

The blue pool seems to shrink

From something that slides above its brink.

What struggle is this, ferocious and still--

What war in sunlight on this hill?

What is it creeping to dart

Like a knife-blade at my heart?

It is noontime, Senlin says, and all is tranquil:

The brilliant sky burns over a greenbright earth.

The peach-tree dreams in the sun, the wall is contented.

A bird in the peach-leaves, moving from sun to shadow,

Phrases again his unremembering mirth,

His lazily beautiful, foolish, mechanical mirth.