80 chapter two
«Someone» are limited in number, and they don’t produce loose ends
but feed into one another.
Written in the same year, this is «There Is a Darkness» (ϔ辵咥ᱫ,
1988):^22
«There Is a Darkness»
I notice forest darkness
darkness with a difference
darkness like a square, in the forest
darkness made by four people walking off in four directions
darkness between the trees but not inside the trees
darkness rising spreading through the sky
darkness not of underground rocks that share everything
darkness that weakens lights scattered evenly
across a thousand miles to their lowest glow
darkness gone through turns of endless trees, not vanished
there is a darkness that forbids strangers to enter at any time
if you reach out a hand to stir it that is
darkness in a giant glass
I notice forest darkness although I am not in the forestJust like «Someone in a Riot of Stones», «There Is a Darkness» con-
tains enigmatic, surrealist scenes and literary techniques not normally
associated with the demystification that is known as a trademark of
Han Dong’s poetry: darkness made by four people, darkness gone
through turns of endless trees, darkness in a giant glass, and the per-
sonification of the underground rocks, in the expression share everything
(דᕐߚϡ ‘not divide thine and mine’). With 12 occurrences in 14
lines, darkness acquires incantatory qualities, at the end of the lines in
the original, and anaphoric in the translation. The poem’s language is
not difficult but not colloquial either: darkness that weakens lights scattered
evenly / across a thousand miles to their lowest glow.
An important scene in this poem is that of four people walking off in
four directions. Their separation and the increasing distance between
them take the form of the darkness that gives the poem its name. Sub-
sequently, these things are projected on the trees that make up the for-
est: there is darkness between them. This is not, however, because they
(^22) Them 5 (1988): 7, Han 2002: 69.