CONTENTS

POEMS BY YU KWANG-CHUNG
余光中詩選

IN MEMORY OF CHOPIN 永念蕭邦*

For eight thousand miles on my trip to Warsaw

My ear was rinsed with your plaintive tune.

Your childhood house at Zelazowa Wola

I saw at last, a wish at last fulfilled.

What my pilgrim shoes brought back to Kaohsiung

Was the same soil you carried abroad

When you waved your dear Poland good-bye.

Long was the exile road that never turned back.

Unforgettable was the clay that smelt Polish

And the kitchen that smelt of mother. After

Vienna and Munich, Majorca and Paris,

Amid the coughing hardly drowned in mazurka,

Home remained out of reach except in dream.

Twice, since you left, your country has fallen;

The Eternal Town prophesied by the Mermaid

Has fallen again and again in fire.

After all the wars the Warsaw that greeted me

Was not the Warsaw you had bid farewell.

The keyboard, sad as if saying your will,

Was powerless to rescue Poland from ruin.

Yet neither the Russian hooves and boots

Nor the Nazi tanks could crush a prelude.

Crescendo goes the Étude of Revolution,

And nocturnes still murmur of George Sand.

When your magic fingers rise and fall

And black keys answer as white keys call,

When staccato and legato windward fly,

The world listens to your song, and, spell-bound,

All the ears to Poland turn intent.

For who can ever forget, Frédéric,

One hundred and ninety years old as you are,

The piano you left us remains as young,

As passionate and as mellifluent

As the flowing Vistula that, day and night,

North-bound, still washes your tears and blood.