Читать книгу A Distant Center - Ha Jin - Страница 14

THE CHOICE OF EXILE

Although you are almost middle-aged

you still want to uproot yourself

and go far away so you can start over.

You haven’t set out yet, uncertain

where to put down roots.

You often wish you could be like that artist

who bought a little island so that

he could live freely on his own land.

He raised vegetables and chickens, did carpentry,

planted bamboo and fruit trees

all over the slope beyond his cottage.

Every season was like spring on his island,

where he could hear only the tides and birdsong.

It was beautiful and quiet enough to smother him.

Don’t forget he chose to kill himself

and even strangled his wife,

because he couldn’t see how to continue,

so crushed was he by madness and fear.

From the very beginning he should have known

that if he chose exile he would have no land of his own

— the desire to depart

would rise in him again and again —

he could find no home other than the road.

Don’t dream of taking root somewhere else.

Once you start out, you must live like a boat,

accepting a wandering fate

drifting from port to port, to port . . .