Consolatio

Su Shi: Who knows where the swan flies?

Remembering the past with Ziyou at Mianchi Temple

When it comes down to it, what is human life like?
It must be like a flying swan that alights on snow or mud.
Sometimes it leaves footprints on the mud.
Then the swan flies off-- where? to the east? to the west?...

       --Su Shi (蘇軾) (1037-1101), also known as Su Dongpo (蘇東坡). Ziyou was his younger brother, Su Che (蘇轍).

和子由澠池懷舊

人生到處知何似？

應似飛鴻踏雪泥。

泥上偶然留指爪，

鴻飛那復計東西....

Wallace Stevens: As if evening found us young, still young

Martial Cadenza

I.

Only this evening I saw again low in the sky
the evening star, at the beginning of winter, the star
that in spring will crown every western horizon,
again...as if it came back, as if life came back,
not in a later son, a different daughter, another place,
but as if evening found us young, still young,
still walking in a present of our own....

        --Wallace Stevens (1879-1955)