In the Darkness, Someone Is Playing Guitar
In the darkness, someone is playing guitar
singing of red roses
or swaying poppies in the countryside
or maybe some other nameless flower
A courtyard with pines, at first light
filled with fallen pinecones, sparrows hopping
a black umbrella and a hat
lying submerged at the bottom of the pond
Midnight snowflakes billow up from the bridge
rising above my head, into the starry sky
They look down on the town from on high
like El Greco
The countryside blooms with blood-red flowers
Someone is playing guitar in the dark
The pearl earrings you took off
roll around the tabletop
Bumping into each other, the pearls make
the faintest of sounds – it's the poppies
swaying open – it's someone
strumming a guitar again in the dark
May 19, 2015
– Wang Yin, translated by Andrea Lingenfelter
I don't know if Yin intended this, but this poem seems to me like a tribute to Lorca: the (apparently) Spanish setting, the beautiful but unsettling & somewhat surreal images, the intimations of love & death.
People are here, but at a remove: someone is playing a guitar, but the person is unseen in the darkness, & perhaps their language is unknown to the poet: the roses & poppies, so vividly present in the first stanza, are merely guesses by the speaker as to what the song sounds like: red roses (associated with romantic love), beautifully swaying poppies (associated with drugs, dreams, & death), or, he admits, maybe some other nameless flower; the anonymous flower has its own mystery. Whatever the song, it brings these floral intimations, with their suggestions of a deeper world, manifested in these noises in the dark.
In the second stanza, we are suddenly in a courtyard with pines; again, there must be people who built & live in the courtyard, but they are not presented; the darkness is just beginning to recede, & we see fallen pinecones & little birds. The pine trees are present only in the form of their fallen seeds (the pinecones). Did someone plant these trees, or is this courtyard a rural retreat? A more direct intimation of human inhabitants comes in the third line, with a black umbrella & a hat, which we are told are submerged at the bottom of the pond. The effect is not startling; the phrasing is too calm for that, but it is unsettling. How long have these items been there? Long enough to be submerged. But how did they get there? Blown off in a storm, or intentionally abandoned? What happened to whoever carried the umbrella & wore the hat: did the person (we don't know the gender) die in the pond? Accidental death, or maybe suicide? You can't rule out murder; it's one of the darker implications underlying the gorgeous images of this poem.
Images & setting change again in the third stanza. Although the transition is abrupt, it doesn't seem so; there is an underlying harmony, a dream- & image-logic, to the very strong visuals here that unites disparate places & times. We are back to the darkness: it is midnight, & though it is snowing, the sky is clear enough for the speaker to see the stars are visible & shining. In another subtly unexpected divergence from normal nature, the snowflakes are whirling up rather than down. Is this related to the way winds play around the bridge? Why is the speaker under a bridge at midnight?
Is the bridge related to the pond, with its hidden umbrella & hat? We receive another intimation of mortality in the mention of El Greco: his elongated Mannerist saints & angels give a celestial touch to the scene, but there is no direct mention of Heaven or God; instead, we have the divine represented by an artist, with an aesthetic & comprehensive gaze on whatever is happening on earth. (& who is the they looking down like El Greco? the stars, the ascending snowflakes?)
In the fourth stanza, the flowers return. This time, they unite the sensuous roses & the death-tinged poppies; the flowers are blood-red. We are back in the darkness, so is the speaker just projecting this color, this union of life & death, onto the flowers? Or are these blooms, like the ones in the first stanza, not in the ground but the air, summoned by the singer's art into the speaker's listening imagination? As with the second stanza, we have a person appearing indirectly, in the form of items she was wearing & has removed: her pearl earrings. Why did she remove the earrings? Getting ready for bed, because it's night, & preparing to sleep, or to sleep with someone? The lovely iridescence of pearls is not mentioned, though the word carries the image into our minds; instead, the adornments are evoked by the sound they make (this is a poem of strongly visual images, many of which are actually present only as sounds or suggestions).
The final stanza flows directly from the preceding one; it is the only stanza in this poem that seems to relate directly to the one that precedes it, creating a sort of culminating image, one that is surprisingly vivid, given how delicate & distant it really is: the faint sound of pearls bumping together as they roll on a tabletop (why are they rolling? were they taken off in haste & tossed down, despite their value? if they were removed abruptly, then why?) This sound, barely there, ties together other image-strands of the poem: the sound of the pearls is also the sound of the poppies opening is also the sound of someone strumming a guitar in the dark – someone strumming a guitar again in the dark; this moment of beauty & apprehension is not unique, but one that is recreated over & over.
The images here are detached, in several ways: separated from each other, & a step or two removed from people. Some of them are only imaginary. Yet together they create a complex of strong images & feelings, vivid & beautiful yet also uncertain & unsettling.
I took this poem from the wonderfully titled collection A Summer Day in the Company of Ghosts by Wang Yin, translated by Andrea Lingenfelter, issued by New York Review Books.
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