Lost in Translation

偶然

我是天空里的一片云，
偶尔投影在你的波心——
　你不必惊异，
　更无须欢喜——
在转瞬间消灭了踪影。
　
你我相逢在黑夜的海上，
你有你的，我有我的，方向；
　你记得也好，
　最好你忘掉，
在这交会时互放的光亮。

-- 徐志摩 


I found this poem lying on my desk one morning . While I was in high school, my father still clung on to the hope of imparting me with a stronger interest in and better, if not full, knowledge of Chinese. At this moment in time, let's just say it remains half-baked. Hopefully not for long though!


Regardless, this poem has stuck to me. Maybe because it's so different from the Tang dynasty poems  I was forced to memorize and mumble aloud as a little kid. Or maybe it's because Xu Zhimo was a Chinese kid like me who received a Western education (Warning!: over-simplification to the max. That thought is just what goes on in my silly head. I readily confess our backgrounds are nothing alike. But I can't help the way my simple brain likes me to relate to other people.) He apparently fell in love with Keats and Shelley while he was at Cambridge then returned to China where he led the modern poetry movement. Who knows, maybe I don't even like the poem that much but am just delighted that I can translate it and am frustrated that I haven't seen another translation that is close enough to my own understanding of it. Here goes: