he comes
when melancholy sits
heavy
on my shoulders
tentatively perches
on the arm
of my chair
gently lifts
his paw
to touch my face
then settles
on my left arm
an anchor
keeping me
from floating off
into space
melancholy
Mid-Autumn Moon by Su Tung-p’o
Six years the moon shone at mid-autumn;
five years it saw us parted.
I sing your farewell song;
sobs from those who sit with me.
The southern capital must be busy,
but you won’t let the occasion pass:
Hundred-league lake of melted silver,
thousand-foot towers in the pendant mirror–
at third watch, when the songs and flutes are stilled
and figures blur in the shade of trees,
you return to your north hall rooms,
cold light glinting on the dew of leaves;
calling for wine, you drink with your wife
and tell the children stories, thinking of me.
You have no way of knowing I’ve been sick,
that I face the pears and chestnuts, cup empty,
and stare east of the old riverbed
where buckwheat blossoms spread their snow.
I wanted to write a verse to your last year’s song
but I was afraid my heart would break.
translated by Burton Watson
On the road to Ch’ang-an by Liu Yung
On the road to Ch’ang-an my horse goes slowly.
In the tall willows a confusion of cicada cries.
Slanting sun beyond the isles,
and winds of autumn on the plain. Only
where the heavens hang,
the view cut off.
The clouds go back, but
gone, they leave no track.
Where is the past?
Unused to indulgence, a little
wine’s no consolation.
It’s not
as it was
when I was young.
translated by J.P. Seaton
The Autumn Brook by Hsüeh T’ao
It has turned crystal clear lately
And flows away like a ribbon of smoke
With a music like a ten strınged zither.
The sound penetrates to my pillow,
And turns my mind to past loves,
And won’t let me sleep for melancholy.
translated by Kenneth Rexroth & Ling Chung
My Youth Is All Gone by Orhan Veli Kanık
Where was this melancholy in those days?
This crying inside,
Singing of faraway things?
I raised hell
Every day then;
To a dance today, to the movies tomorrow,
If I didn’t like it, to a cafe;
If I didn’t like that either, to the park;
I embellished my lover
In poems,
I took her to picnics,
A book of poems on our laps;
Where, where,
Where was this melancholy in those days?
translated by Murat Nemet-Nejat
Song: Thoughts of a Traveler on the Chikuma River by Shimazaki Toson
Yesterday it was this way too–
today again it will be like this.
Why fret your life away
forever worrying about tomorrow?
How many times have I gone down into the valley
where dreams of glory and decay still linger,
seen the uncertain drift of the river waves,
sand-laden water that circles and returns?
Ah, what is the old castle saying?
What do the waves along the shore reply?
Be still and consider the ages gone by–
a hundred years are like yesterday
Chikuma River willows are hazy,
spring is shallow, the water flows on.
Alone I wander over the rocks,
binding my sorrows to this shore
translated by Hiroaki Sato & Burton Watson
Leonard Durso 