Fan Jinghua: Fallen Leaves

　　Fallen Leaves (A Fragment)

When you sit by your desk by a high window,
Higher than all the treetops,
The swivel chair does not bring in a framed landscape.
The square sky does not offer an objet d’art;
It is polluted, dull and opaque,
And clouds in it are drifting to nowhere.
You turn away from it, and the drifting finds its own end.

If you were younger, they would become
Celestial horses galloping across the rainbow,
Their hooves smelling of wild flowers.
By now, the trees down there must have been
Deprived off leaves, as they become colder and colder,
From red to brown and black.

Who would let their windows open to frigidity,
Only to learn how few leaves are still in the wind?
Not you, as you have grown acrophobic since mid-autumn.
The fallen leaves are safer, like a boy who chooses
To lie on the ground so he will never fall from his bed.
　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　Dec. 06, 2007

　　落叶 (残篇)
你坐在高窗前的书桌旁，
坐在所有的树梢上方，
转椅的自由并没为你带来镶框的风景，
一片四方的天难成客观的艺术。
污染了，呆滞而混浊，
其间偶有云朵漂泊，不知所终。
你转头面墙，漂泊在漂泊中寻找终点。

如果你更年轻一些，它们或许是
天马，蹄声嘚嘚于辽阔的天空，
跨越彩虹，踏起野花的香味。
而此时，窗下，树木被剥夺了
叶子，越来越冷，它们红过，
然后转成褐色，终于枯黑腐烂。

还有谁任窗子向寒冷敞开，
仅仅为了知道还有几片叶子在风中瑟缩？
不是你，因为你自深秋以来就开始恐高。
那些落叶应该安全了，犹如一个睡相顽劣的孩子
宁愿选择地铺，免于从床上摔下。
　　　　　2007年12月8日

Note: A colleague jumped to death from the tenth floor in his apartment house at one o'clock pm on Dec. 5th. He is 50, a professor in People's University of China in Beijing, specializing in modern Western aesthetics and philosophy covering the theories from Nietzsche to Heidegger and beyond. Among his last words, he wrote: "At midday, a Nietschean time, he drops from the high sky, like a fallen leaf or a flying bird?"