Why Snow Falls in Love with the Earth



The perfume from rosemary

is as thin and shallow as a cicada’s slough.

It loves nothing.
Coal and morality spew ash.

What’s frozen in place is the rice-straw scarecrow in the field.

It too loves nothing
Snow. It only loves deepest winter, the 12th Lunar month.

It only loves our deepest winters’

small lanes, frail trees, and little towns.
White snow falls on the black earth…

a godless beauty.
Don’t ask why snow falls in love with the earth.

In my eyes snow and love have the same… texture.
Its tears water the flowers,

The fantasy of it easily shatters.
And there’s more. It hides the greatest sorrows

without the tiniest sigh.

And, with a pure, clear heart it writes about pain and joy.
The more freely snows love the earth,

the more our world, that’s neither good nor bad,

shimmers like a dream.




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雪为什么爱上大地



迷迭香提炼出的香水

是空薄的蝉蜕，它不爱
煤和道德都在吐露灰尘

静下来的，是田野里的稻草人

它也不爱
它只爱腊月的人间

它只爱腊月人间的

小路、小树、小村庄
白雪落在黑土地上

它的美是有罪的
别问雪为什么爱上大地

在我眼里，它和爱情有相同的质地
用眼泪浇灌沿途的花朵

这富于浪漫但很容易破碎
还有，它藏起大悲切

也没有小感慨

它用清洁的精神书写悲欢
它们越是如此轻松地爱着大地

我越是对善恶不分的人间

感到了虚妄