schadenfreude
04-27-2008, 04:50 AM
Once again I am caught in a storm of
metallic dragons, jocular monkey men,
firecrackers and swishing satin people,
rambling in a hundred different dialects
that I do not understand and never will.
Small children eat sweet bread with their fingers,
dribbling gooey sauces down their chins.
Pointing to various colourful goods
with sticky hands, they shout “Look Ma! Look!”
Their mothers smile and ruffle their heads,
coarse fingers temporarily at rest.
Musicians gesture wildly in dazzling suits
sprinkled with sequins sewn by great-grandmothers
from a land long ago, a time long ago.
They sing, voices amplified a thousand times
To leave a long ringing in your ears.
And all around, people are jostling and bustling;
And laughing- laughing in a thousand different tones.
And the earth trembles,
Oh how it trembles!
The pattering of a thousand feet,
The chattering of a thousand teeth;
the bright voices and the wild bird shrieks of joy
sets forth a motion which surpasses all barriers,
breaking all former bonds and reservations
for just one day.
The young women, with their slender figures-
smooth black hair tumbling down their shoulders,
are brighter than the black-ringed eyes,
those polished faces of Elle, could ever be.
They accept plastic crimson roses from young men
and for this moment, they are as beautiful as the flowers
growing in the Botanical Gardens.
The old people do not know the words they speak
in this foreign language- the words of the new world,
but they smile, wide smiles with missing teeth,
because they know the words too well.
Here, the colours are bright and vibrant,
The reds, the golds; the long silken cheongsams
Sweeping a trail through the dusty streets.
And oh look! The Dragon,
The dragon dances by; dancing too gracefully
for its enormous length and fearsome face.
See how it bounds from the ground-
momentarily suspended in the air -
it swallows fear like the breaths from our bodies.
But we steal it back with the boom banging of our drums,
the sizzling sparks of fire and paper bursting into smoke.
And now we buy luck in the same way we buy joy-
with wide-faced laughing and crinkled eyes.
How lovely it is to see the nuances of age
spreading across faces like growing branches of a tree!
Tomorrow, they will pack it all away-
cardboard television boxes to be stored
in old cupboards, and we will all retreat
to our quiet lives in our slow suburbs
where the sky is dusty blue, the walls a pale peach;
where voices are softer and words are longer;
and where flowers are only ever violet.
metallic dragons, jocular monkey men,
firecrackers and swishing satin people,
rambling in a hundred different dialects
that I do not understand and never will.
Small children eat sweet bread with their fingers,
dribbling gooey sauces down their chins.
Pointing to various colourful goods
with sticky hands, they shout “Look Ma! Look!”
Their mothers smile and ruffle their heads,
coarse fingers temporarily at rest.
Musicians gesture wildly in dazzling suits
sprinkled with sequins sewn by great-grandmothers
from a land long ago, a time long ago.
They sing, voices amplified a thousand times
To leave a long ringing in your ears.
And all around, people are jostling and bustling;
And laughing- laughing in a thousand different tones.
And the earth trembles,
Oh how it trembles!
The pattering of a thousand feet,
The chattering of a thousand teeth;
the bright voices and the wild bird shrieks of joy
sets forth a motion which surpasses all barriers,
breaking all former bonds and reservations
for just one day.
The young women, with their slender figures-
smooth black hair tumbling down their shoulders,
are brighter than the black-ringed eyes,
those polished faces of Elle, could ever be.
They accept plastic crimson roses from young men
and for this moment, they are as beautiful as the flowers
growing in the Botanical Gardens.
The old people do not know the words they speak
in this foreign language- the words of the new world,
but they smile, wide smiles with missing teeth,
because they know the words too well.
Here, the colours are bright and vibrant,
The reds, the golds; the long silken cheongsams
Sweeping a trail through the dusty streets.
And oh look! The Dragon,
The dragon dances by; dancing too gracefully
for its enormous length and fearsome face.
See how it bounds from the ground-
momentarily suspended in the air -
it swallows fear like the breaths from our bodies.
But we steal it back with the boom banging of our drums,
the sizzling sparks of fire and paper bursting into smoke.
And now we buy luck in the same way we buy joy-
with wide-faced laughing and crinkled eyes.
How lovely it is to see the nuances of age
spreading across faces like growing branches of a tree!
Tomorrow, they will pack it all away-
cardboard television boxes to be stored
in old cupboards, and we will all retreat
to our quiet lives in our slow suburbs
where the sky is dusty blue, the walls a pale peach;
where voices are softer and words are longer;
and where flowers are only ever violet.