歌者 - Wanyang Du

歌者 

the one who doesn’t sing 
who takes a degree 
in maths or medicine or engineering 
and quits their job at forty. 

who sits in their car and finds 
watermills of sunlight 
in the spokes of wheels 

and almost cries when 
the sunset-colored buds by the street 
bloom into ugly red flowers. 

the one who lives with two beasts— 
the snake that would swallow the world 
and the nightingale 
pressed into a tear of honey. 

歌者—

you sit in your office after lunch 
swollen with food and hollow within. 

you spend late nights awake 
cold wind slithering over your arms 
instead of an evening breeze. 

you unhinge your jaw and you want a song 
you have nothing 
you had swallowed air. 

歌者—

even as the snake 
grows colder with scales that numb your pulse 
you dive deeper into 

the blindness of trapped sunlight, 
into frayed ends of red petals and
flowers 
like crumbled fabric. 

and if there be a thousand small cuts 
to the whites of your open eyes 
you cry and continue walking 

you tremble with the fireflies on a summer eve 
and you start to see 

歌者— 

do you keep both your beasts? 
must the snake swallow the nightingale— 
or can there be shadows between 
watermills of sunlight.