Iris Shun-Ru Chang was an American historian and journalist. She is best known for her best-selling 1997 account of the Nanking Massacre, The Rape of Nanking. She committed suicide on November 9, 2004
Mourning Song
How long will I hold up?
I feel your ashes around me.
Your song of life can not be complished;
I hear the wind blow it away.
Time is an empty piano,
white and black, with a disturbed tune.
What slips through our fingers?
My heart falls with your fleeting existence.
White and black, the empty sky,
white and black, the empty note,
I look for the stars’ guidance,
only find petals like snowflakes.
Time is an empty piano,
white and black, with a disturbed tune.
Your song of life cannot be complished;
I hear the wind blow it away.
I hear the wind blow it away…
(I wrote this after I heard the sad news in 2004)