Introduction to the Poetry Collection
Combining musings and observations on cultural differences between East and West; balancing one’s love for the arts while navigating corporate travails; spelunking timeless truths on love and time, and on spirituality and eternity, this bilingual debut collection of English and Chinese poems by David Cai Jinhang aims to provide one with a unique window into the emotional landscape of a salaryman struggling to reconcile the pursuit of beauty with the sufferings of life in its many forms. By turns meditative and expressive, the poems serve to depict the antithesis between Flesh and Spirit, West and East, Logic and Emotions, Future and Past, Modern and Classical poetry, transposing the readers’ introspective journey into a metaphysical experience, where time seems to congeal into fragments of eternity, and mundaneness transmogrifies into momentary transcendence.
Sample Pages
Select Poems
AN ANTSPIRATION*
—Reflections after watching the preview of Singapore's SG60 National Day Parade—
I am but a humble ant,
harbouring the simplest dream.
I need not stand atop a sheer cliff,
bathed in the slanting glow of dusk;
a single dewdrop on a leaf after rain
is enough to illuminate my small and shadowed world.
I am but a feeble ant,
relying on neighbours, leaning on kin.
I do not need the stature of giants,
for the countless tiny smiles around me,
the smallest gestures each day,
are strong enough to shift burdens
heavier than myself a thousandfold.
Besides, our vision is poor—
we cannot see the vast and mighty beyond.
Yet even with a life as fleeting as an ephemera,
a worth as lowly as a blade of grass,
when the evening sun spills its light
upon you, upon him,
upon our surging, dark-hued forms,
suddenly, all seems boundless—
you are not you, he is not he,
and I am no longer merely I.
Yes, we could even drink every drop of the sun dry,
crush every drop of the peaks beneath our feet!
*Note : "Antspiration" is a nonce created by the author to refer to the aspiration of an ant.
THE CRY OF EVERY FALLING PETAL
Who can silence death
With the beauty of a thousand blooms,
But the one who loved
As though it didn’t cost?
Who can trace a path
Unperturbed by a thousand winds
But the one who saw the only way
From divine heights aloft?
If we learn to be silent
Amidst these storm-tossed souls,
We might hear like the leaves hear as they grow:
The petals of passion fall with the passing，
The passing of transience,
The passing of tears,
The passing of an ultimate life into the yearned-for earth.
If we learn to scatter our cherished hours
Unto the barren lifetimes of every stranger here,
We might see like the low ones do with their finite years:
The shoots of salvation
Rise with the sowing，
The sowing of despair,
The sowing of tears,
The sowing of wordless prayers into the quiet years.
Who can conjure life
Amidst the darkness of a thousand years,
But the one who kept silent
Before the jeers of the ones he loved?
Who can heal a heart
Torn asunder with a thousand cuts,
But the one who felt the cry
Of every falling petal sear?
(This poem was published in the inaugural issue of the Huo Feng Phoenix Poetry Journal and the first issue of the electronic newsletter. It was also recited at the Special Poetry Festival of Singapore Edition Invitational “Between The Lines, A Weekly International Poetry Reading Community”)