Confounded Twilight

Afternoon sun poured into rung-out cloud-tops
allowing only enough light
to confound twilight
when it comes

The green beneath it blossomed into harmony
buds that would later burst into foreign tongue
reflecting moonlight poorly
as moonlight poorly stands in
for the sun

April taps patiently on panes, and I am unmoved
Everything in its own time,
even me

She was an unscalable mess, indifferent to fate,
even as night falls
and I no different from her
or even you

I cannot subsist on a diet of breadcrumbs
nor will I entwine my vines
to be nourished by yours

There’s no known scarcity compelling me
to rebreathe your air

On-tempo or asynchronous,
we may both live

As you become a tree,
I shall admire your knotted timbre

But I’m no mockingbird; I’ll sing beneath you,
announcing our quarry
to the other coyotes

Or I’ll shine above you, as your limbs reach
for my moonlight
***

NaPoWriMo Day 21: Today’s Prompt:

Find a poem in a language that you don’t know, and perform a “homophonic translation” on it. What does that mean? Well, it means to try to translate the poem simply based on how it sounds. You may not wind up with a credible poem at the end, but this can be a fun way to step outside of your own mind for a bit, and develop a poem that speaks in a distinctive voice. 

Yeah, nah. I went off-prompt today, as much as hated to do so. I’ve done homophonic translations many times before, but it just didn’t do anything for me this time. I couldn’t turn off my rational brain long enough to create a word palette with which to experiment.

I gave it a go, but bending the foreign words into something else that made sense in English felt weird to me this time. I used to do this a lot with J-Pop, K-Pop, and anime theme music, but twisting the words of a foreign poet felt wrong to me on some level. I’m not sure how I’d feel if someone twisted a poem of mine about some heavy topic like racism or injustice into some kind of child’s nursery rhyme.

Meh, I’m probably reading too much into it. I couldn’t get out of my own head this time. Oh well.