One Poem by Xuanhui Jin（Kim）

 

Colour Palette

In the centre of the canvas,

a small town quietly immerses itself in the night.

The outlines of wilderness, cottages, churches,

and villages emerge against a backdrop

Of interwoven blue and black lines.

Straight lines and twisted lines cast reflections,

Twisted yet sometimes straight.

 

The stars are clusters of yellow yolks,

The moon is a yellow flame, sickeningly oversized.

Both stars and moon shine brightly,

turning the sky into a pan with spilled oil,

while the Milky Way swirls like the shape of the wind.

Yellow, white, blue, black,

Then yellow turns into blue,

Blue turns into black.

 

I can’t quite explain it,

It’s the wind sweeping,

the Earth moving,

the halo of stars.

Abrupt pine trees with twisted branches

awkwardly stretch upward,

blocking the forefront,

swaying strangely with the wind.

Each branch is a black flame.

 

The pointed rooftops also seem abrupt,

disrupting harmony.

If everything were straight, horizontal lines,

the nighttime blue mountains

Wouldn’t resemble mountains.

They’d seem more like surging waves,

ready to engulf the trees, houses, and wilderness.

 

Have you ever felt like being swallowed up too?

A soul pursuing freedom has only a window for company.

And I heard that some scenes in the painting are your imagination.

You are like that abrupt and seemingly mad tree,

imagining licking the sky but unable to reach.

Your world is so serene, so neat,

yet so exaggerated, so mentally tense.

 

Perhaps people are all the same,

trees are the same,

houses are the same---

all wanting to reach higher.

All aspire to happiness and freedom.

The trajectories of nebulae are entangled,

Don’t be too attached

and it’s only after death that you are honoured as a king.

By Xuanhui Jin（Kim）