Agoloso Presents - Atondido Stories Agoloso Presents - Mama Mada | Page 175

Mama Mada
The Old Dust
by Li Po
The living is a passing traveler;
The dead, a man come home.
One brief journey betwixt heaven and earth,
Then, alas! we are the same old dust of ten thousand ages.
The rabbit in the moon pounds the medicine in vain;
Fu-sang, the tree of immortality, has crumbled to kindling wood.
Man dies, his white bones are dumb without a word
When the green pines feel the coming of the spring.
Looking back, I sigh; looking before, I sigh again.
What is there to prize in the life's vaporous glory?
Night sky
by Jack Little
Beyond my window, the sky swirls night black
shadows, I trace my reflection in the windowpane
before turning hastily to bed. Puzzle pieces, dream
formations, images of the moon at different latitudes:
Caracas, Buenos Aires, Montevideo,
Panamá and São Paolo
my mind awaits them all, the visits of feather capped
Gods of heavy ancientness, the smell of other
worlds that cling to my bedclothes: the heat of night
and journeys to far away temples of unknown Sun people…
I await Bogotá
I await Lima,
Barranquilla, Brasilia, Managua, Bucaramanga…
Asunción… and on and on – all memories learnt
from news stories, a crack of light breaking the sky
and reminding me of the classroom globes of childhood.
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