When you were young, the wind followed you
Go all over Magdeburg. In Vienna, the wind seeks you
to one courtyard and another,
It overturns the fountain and makes your hair stand on end.
In Prague, the wind accompanies the newly born child
Young couple with serious expressions. But you made them hold their breath,
the ladies in white dresses,
A man with a mustache and a high collar.
When you bow to Emperor Haile Selassie,
It waits in your cuff.
When you shook hands with the democratic king of Belgium
It's also there.
The wind blew mangoes and garbage bags across the streets of Nairobi.
You have seen the wind chasing zebras across the Serengeti plains.
As you walk out under the roof of your suburban home in Sarasota, Florida,
The wind is with you again. In every country town, every stop where the circus stops,
It makes almost no noise in the woods.
You comment on it all your life,
It comes as it says,
While you're smoking a chunky Havana cigar,
Watching the smoke drift south, always south,
As they drifted toward Puerto Rico and the tropics,
how does it make hotel room balconies below
Hydrangea's fat face shakes.
That morning, seventy-five years old, ten stories high,
Between two hotels, the first day of spring
Advertising stunt show, where to go
follow your wind
blowing from the Caribbean,
Throwing you into your arms desperately, like a young lover!
Your hair stands up.
You want to crouch down and grab the wire.
Later, they came to clean up the scene
and remove the cable. They take down the one you've been on all your life on
tightrope. Think about it: tightrope.
——Raymond Carver, "To Top Aerial Acrobat Karl Wallenda" translated by Sun Zhongxu
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