Yang Mu 楊牧

MSS Sealed in a Bottle

瓶中稿

Now the sun sinks where it is the west

Beyond the cypress. The waves are

On this shore. I know, of course, each of them

Sets off from Hualien. I was inspired once

When I was a child to ask the ocean whether

There was another shore beyond its faraway edge—

And now the other shore is this, here, with

Stars scattered around

And there are just the scattered stars

Shining on my exhausted sentiments

Tenderly asking the surging waves

If they remember the beach of Hualien

I wonder if it takes ten years, too

For the wave, which roars up to the Hualien beach

and ebbs orderly, to travel to this place. I wonder

But I suppose it takes just a determination

To participate: as the wave turns back to the ocean

It assumes the permanent form, as it always does

And, immediately, it flows on this solitary shore

Suppose I sit down quietly and listen to it

And suppose I am observing its form

To figure out a portrait of myself:

Can the little one on the left

Be a fry of fish?

The other one, bigger and rather exquisite

Is probably a blade of sea weed. And farther

There is a sizable one, which may very well be

A skipjack rushing the fisherman's light in the summer night

I wonder what I should choose to be

Now, when there is a wave surging near

Toward this solitary shore

Maybe I should just become a wave

Turning back and merge, presently

In the peaceful ocean

And flowing up to the beach of

Hualien

But, if I do walk toward the ocean

The waters will rise, due to the law of conservation of mass

And the sand on the other shore will be wetted a little more than usual

And if I keep on walking and even submerge

Seven feet west of the solitary shore

I suspect there will be a rumor in Hualien

Now when it is June, that a tidal wave will engulf the town

Translated by Mu Yang 楊牧