Chinese poet

New Year’s Eve: Spending the Night Outside Ch’ang-chou City by Su Tung-p’o

/ zdunno03 / 3 Comments

From the traveler, singing; from the field, weeping–both spur sorrow.
Fires in the distance, dipping stars move slowly toward extinction.
Am I waiting up for New Year’s Eve? Aching eyes won’t close.
No one here speaks my dialect: I long for home.
A double quilt and my feet still cold–the frost must be heavy;
my head feels light–I washed it and the hair is getting thin.
I thank the flickering torch that doesn’t refuse
to keep me company on a lonely boat through the night.

translated by Burton Watson

to the Tune: Happy Events Approaching by Chu Tun-ju

/ zdunno03 / 4 Comments

Shaking my head, I left the world of red dust,
No longer caring when to be sober, when drunk.
My livelihood–the green grass cloak and the straw hat;
I’m used to wearing frost and braving snow.

When night falls, the wind settles and the fishing line lies idle.
Above and below is the new moon.
For a thousand miles, water and sky are the same color.
Watch the single wild goose appear and disappear!

translated by James J.Y. Liu

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