9th Century Chinese poetry

Late Spring Improvisation by Yu Xuanji

/ zdunno03 / 4 Comments

Very few visitors or lovers
come through this alley to this hidden door

and as for someone I can really cherish
I meet him only in dreams

perfumed gauze and damask–
whose empty seat at the banquet?

songs carried on the wind–
coming from what pavilion?

around here it’s mostly army drums
disrupting morning sleep

nothing but magpies in the courtyard
clattering through spring sorrow

how could I hope to have any part
in the world of grand events

my own life at such a distance
and no place to tie up my boat?

translated  by David Yooung & Jiann I. Lin

Saying Goodbye by Yu Xuanji

/ zdunno03 / 6 Comments

Several nights in this gorgeous pavilion
and I began to have expectations

until my darling surprised me
he had to be off  on a journey

so I sleep alone and don’t discuss
the whereabouts of clouds

around the lamp, now almost spent,
one lost moth is circling.

translated by David Young & Jiann I. Lin

While Traveling byChia Tao

/ zdunno03 / 10 Comments

With so much on my mind,
it’s hard to express myself in letters.

How long has it been since I left home?
Old friends are no longer young.

Frosted leaves fall into empty bird nests;
river fireflies weave through open windows.

I stop at a forest monk’s,
and spend the night in “quiet sitting.”

translated by Mike O’Connor

First Month: at Ch’ung-jang House by Li Shang-yin

/ zdunno03 / 2 Comments

Secret behind locks and double bars, covered with green moss.
In the deepest corridors, innermost chambers, pacing to and fro.
A presage that the wind will rise–the halo round the moon.
The season of cold dews still, the buds unopened.
A bar sweeps past the flap of the blind. Endless tossing and turning.
A mouse unsettles the cobweb on the window, startles with brief suspicions.
With the lamp at my back I talk alone to a fragrance still in the air,
And unawares, just as before, sing Rise in the Night and Come.

translated by A.C. Graham

untitled love poem by Li Shang-yin

/ zdunno03 / 5 Comments

Coming was an empty promise, you have gone, and left no footprints:
The moonlight slants above the roof, already the fifth watch sounds.
Dreams of remote partings, cries which cannot summon,
Hurrying to finish the letter, ink which will not thicken.
The light of the candle half encloses kingfishers threaded with gold,
The smell of musk comes faintly through embroidered water-lilies.
Young Liu complained that Fairy Hill is far.
Past Fairy Hill, range above range, ten thousand mountains rise.

translated by A.C. Graham