Dragon

By Chris Song

(Reading Rilke)

People who feed it with respect

have never seen its real face.

In the days when no emperor is there,

they all think they are its heirs.

Inexistence is, perhaps,

far more fascinating in fact.

Like a lonesome passerby,

in a trance, white clouds in mind.

Sometimes it entangles with lightning and thunders,

embracing the black clouds together,

like shoddy cotton that twists over and over.

Sometimes it lets lightning and thunders

strike their lineaments within an instant,

as if to shed the burden of existence.

One muffled thunder on a sunny day

is enough to make a lonesome passerby stay.

As he stops in his steps, in a trance,

the dragon is fed.

(Translated by Gary Cheung)