
Source: The Cardturner: A Novel about a King, a Queen, and a Joker
Source: Catching Fire
Source: The Cardturner: A Novel about a King, a Queen, and a Joker
Emissaries http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/emissaries/
From the poems written in English
“If it's possible to send a message from heaven, I'll get one to you.”
Source: Don't Die, My Love
Written on the Ninth Day of the Ninth Month of the Year yi-yu (A.D. 409)
Translated by William Acker
Context: Slowly, slowly,
the autumn draws to its close.
Cruelly cold
the wind congeals the dew.
Vines and grasses
will not be green again—
The trees in my garden
are withering forlorn.
The pure air
is cleansed of lingering lees
And mysteriously,
Heaven's realms are high.
Nothing is left
of the spent cicada's song,
A flock of geese
goes crying down the sky.
The myriad transformations
unravel one another
And human life
how should it not be hard?
From ancient times
there was none but had to die,
Remembering this
scorches my very heart.
What is there I can do
to assuage this mood?
Only enjoy myself
drinking my unstrained wine.
I do not know
about a thousand years,
Rather let me make
this morning last forever.
Speech to a luncheon of lobby correspondents (c. early 1968), quoted in T. E. Utley, Enoch Powell: The Man and his Thinking (1968), p. 114
1960s
“Children are the living messages we send to a time we will not see.”
Introduction
The Disappearance of Childhood (1982)
Context: Children are the living messages we send to a time we will not see. From a biological point of view it is inconceivable that any culture will forget that it needs to reproduce itself. But it is quite possible for a culture to exist without a social idea of children. Unlike infancy, childhood is a social artifact, not a biological category.