CONTENTS

POEMS BY YU KWANG-CHUNG
余光中詩選

DEBUSSY : CLAIRE DE LUNE
月光曲*

The cozy alley of Amoy Street, long and slim:
Such a clean wheat straw to suck in moonlight,
Cool moonlight, that soothes you with a taste
Of peppermint. Down in the pond or the lake,

Trailing algae and duckweeds in your way
Come off with a mere sweep of your hand,
As you shed the tree shade and wear the moonlight
And enter a gurgling piano strain.

Whose fingers are skimming such a rippling stream?
Whose fingertips are over the keyboard,
Such a refined, precocious soul pursuing?
What, indeed, is on the player’s mind?

What is on Debussy’s mind? Indeed,
What’s moving him, the murmuring Debussy?
When moonlight backstrokes on the Seine,
When the fingertips alight on the ke

What is she thinking about, the player:
That this is the last summer vacation,
When moonlight is magic but once in life
To light and lure you to your love

And then retire in classic stanzas
To adorn Juliet’s veranda, the dream
Of mid-summer, the mood of Zhang Jiu-ling?
Is she thinking, thinking of all these?

Inside the wall overhanging with vine,
Is the rippling cadence saying all these?
Am I in the past or at the present? Who
Indeed, am I, who is thinking of all these?