Listening to the sea

When my mother talks about another woman,
her facial expressions, surging, stretch into a mountain ridge.
I climb up the ridge
and see the distant yesterday:
My grandmother stands atop the hill at sunset,
her eagle-sharp eyes catching the far away.
What’s far away burns into a wildfire in her deep pupils.

Far away. The other side of the mountain. A mystery.
A temptation cursed.  An unwritten commandment.
A young woman’s dream, reaching the sea thousands of miles away.
A secret that women guard at all costs
with every nerve in their bodies.
In each dark hour when they lose their sun,
it reveals a deep-blue dawn.

When my mother tells the story, there is also a sea
surging in her heart.
She has inherited her mother’s dream, and this dream
unchanged, I have inherited from her.
Like what’s running in your blood, or part of it,
it belongs to you, but not entirely yours.

My dream about the sea matures much earlier than theirs.
When I was a teenage, I put my dream in my luggage when traveling
across mountains.  Where I leave my young footprints—
mountain ranges, jungles, valleys—I often hear
a deep neigh cried out by the horse in my dream from the ocean corner.
I hear the blue water calling me day and night.

As if guided by a divine power, the sound of the water leads me, us, always,
and becomes a heavenly song we can share.
By the Milky Way, I see an old man
picking up my paper boat, murmuring:
"How I love you
is how I will love your sea.”

听海

听海

我的母亲讲起另一个女人时
起伏的表情延伸成一条山脊线
站在这条线上
我看到古老的昨天：
我的外婆站在日落的山头
鹰一样锐利的眼神捉住远方
远方在她深深的瞳孔里烧成野火

远方。山的另一边。是谜
被诅咒的诱惑，不成文的律条
少女的梦，到达千里之外的大海
这是秘密，不惜代价的
用身体里每一束神经来扼守
在每个失去太阳的黑夜
它透出幽深的黎明

母亲讲述故事时
心中也澎湃着一片海
她遗传了她母亲的梦，这一点
从未改变，我又从她那里得到继承
像是融入血液里的一部分
它属于你，又不完全是你个人的

我关于海的梦，熟得比她们都早
少年时，我曾将它装入行囊翻山越岭
幼小的脚步所经之处：
山岗，丛林，幽谷，我总是听到
听到梦的马从海角发来嘶鸣
听到蓝色的海水日夜呼唤

冥冥，那水声一直指引着我们
成为我们共享的天歌
在银河之岸，我看见一位老人
正拾起我的纸船，喃喃的念：
“我怎样的爱你
也怎样爱你的海”