Color Blind (By Yi Sha) Poem by Denis Mair

by Yi Sha
(translated by Denis Mair)
 
The rainbow you tell me about:
Where is the beauty in it?
And to me that flag I see
Looks like a diaper.
I make myself finish the chess game
This lifetime, but the rook I lost to you
Was a giveaway.
What now?
You say I'm a victim of strong colors;
I know only shades of bright and dark.
I die beneath stoplights of the city,
I die unresigned and staring
At an unsolved knot of truth and lies.
As fate would have it,
In my final glimpse, it is given to me
To see my grandfather- -a color blind farmer
All his life harvesting
Wheat of livid red.