Wordless

translated by PLS and Bonnie Ran

1）

They wrote a book.

2）

You noticed its beautiful appearance (of course, it's hard to ignore it),

admiring its solid yet charming blue clothes,

the Gothic letters and golden European style motif,

and the tiny, slightly raised maple leaf engraving.

You’d never mentioned you were out of breath,

and time seemed to have left no trace in their book.

You said the purpose of this journey

was to excavate their traces in the book:

But what was it actually?

Ancient myths,

historical footprints,

or distant gods?

Then you opened the book without any delay,

rather reluctant to show your scrupulousness,

only to find out:

3）

The pages are blank.

4）

You started cursing them for being altisonant, superficial and deceptive,

as if to exhaust all the rhetoric you’d ever mastered.

Yet you still had no clue who they were,

there’s no way for you to find out

that those thin aged papers

were the bleak autumn filled with fallen leaves,

the grave memories from the journey,

the densely lined words that had already fled,

plus

the work that spoke “wordless”.