longing

from At Play in the Fields of the Lord by Peter Matthiessen: the first two paragraphs

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In the jungle, during one night in each month, the moths did not come to lanterns; through the black reaches of the outer night, so it was said, they flew toward the full moon.

So it was said. He could not recall where he had heard it, or from whom; it had been somewhere on the rivers of Brazil. He had never watched the lanterns at the time of the full moon; when he remembered it was always the dark of the moon or beyond the tropics. Yet the idea of the moths in the high darkness, straining upward, filled him with longing, and at these times he would know that he had not found what he was looking for, nor come closer to discovering what it was.

Moonlit Night by Wei Ying-wu

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A brilliant moon wanders the spring city,
thick dew luminous among fragrant grasses.

I sit, longing. Empty, this window of gauze
torn and fluttering in crystalline radiance,

crystalline radiance where it ends like this:
torn more and more, a person growing old.

translated by David Hinton

Exodus by Orhan Veli Kanık

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I

From his window overlooking the roofs
The harbor was in sight
Church bells
Tolled all day long.
From his bed the trains could be heard
From time to time
And at night.
He loved a girl
Who lived in the house across the street.
Be that as it may,
He left this town
And moved to another.

II

Now the poplars are in view
Out of his window
Along the canal.
Daytime it keeps raining
And the moon is up at night.
There’s a market in the square nearby.
As for him, all the time,
Whatever it is–a trip or money or a letter,
He keeps thinking of something.

translated by Talat S. Halman

In Pursuit by Lei Shuyan

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I’m not the water of the Yangtze River
But the yearning tears of the Snowy Mountains.
Drop by drop, day and night, they drip and flow
Then rush into the ocean that I long for.

Since my heart is betrothed to a distant place,
That’s where my ideal is.
I’m not afraid of high mountains and isolated roads,
For I must seek my ocean.

I’m not afraid of zig-zags,
Falls and tumbles.
The pain of yearning
Lasts longer than the pain of seeking.

Bright sun, don’t argue me into staying.
Steep cliffs, don’t block my strides.
Betraying my ideal, accepting other situations
Would drive me stark mad.

Though I’m unsure which road leads there,
I know where my ideal resides.
Even if I have to make a thousand detours
And suffer a thousand setbacks, I will never lose heart.

translated by Fang Dai, Dennis Ding, & Edward Morin