Page 69 - Costellazioni 5

PATRICK COLM HOGAN, Affective Space and Emotional Time

Chill. Bleak. Cruel. Cut. Woe. Shame.
First, a little warmth, then the cold came,
Worse than before.
It’s hard to rest, or calm the mind.
Two, three cups of tasteless wine.
When evening ends,
How can I stand up against
The gusting winds?
The wild geese pass overhead.
It wounds my heart.
Yet just last season we were all friends.
Yellow blossoms clump in clusters along the grounds.
Withered. Faded. Wasting. Who will pluck them now?
Stationed at the window, keeping guard.
How to go on, without family,
as it grows dark.
The bare Together tree,
fine rain on her uncovered arms.
Yellow dusk arrives.
Dripdrip. Dropdrop.
How can a single sign—
Autumn weighing down the heart and mind—
Convey both grief and fear at the same time?

I will begin with some comments about the form of the poem. Poetic
form involves periodic sequences, for example rhythmic patterns,
that may suggest thematic concerns regarding time. The periodic or-
ganization would have been even more pronounced in a poem such
as this because it was written as a song lyric, with an accompanying
tune, now lost. Lǐ Qīngzhào begins by drawing our attention to this
periodicity, slowing it to a plodding and hesitant sequence of repeat-
ed and syntactically dissociated monosyllables. Here are the opening
lines in characters and pinyin:

覓覓

慘慘

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