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A gauze sleeve stirs the incense smoke unceasingly,
Red lotus blossoms spiral up the autumn mist.
Soft clouds upon the mountain suddenly shake in the wind,
Light willows by the pond begin to brush the water.
赠张云容舞
罗袖动香香不已，
红蕖袅袅秋烟里。
轻云岭上乍摇风，
嫩柳池边初拂水。
Yang Yuhuan, also known as Yang Guifei (“Consort Yang”), was a musician, legendary beauty, and the last principal consort of Emperor Xuanzong; her death during the An Lushan Rebellion was memorialized in "Song of Everlasting Sorrow". And as I was looking through the massive Complete Tang Poetry anthology, I stumbled across a poem attributed to her.
I like the opening out from an indoor scene into effects on the outside world, the expanding then contracting scales, and the interlocking parallels of smoke | wind || mist | water. It's not a profound poem, but it's both graceful and intricately constructed. The yun of the dancer's name is cloud, but I don't think the clouds in the poem are supposed to represent her -- the clouds are acted upon, while her dancing is otherwise the agent of all the motion.
(I did, btw, come across a poem by the dancer.)
---L.
Red lotus blossoms spiral up the autumn mist.
Soft clouds upon the mountain suddenly shake in the wind,
Light willows by the pond begin to brush the water.
赠张云容舞
罗袖动香香不已，
红蕖袅袅秋烟里。
轻云岭上乍摇风，
嫩柳池边初拂水。
Yang Yuhuan, also known as Yang Guifei (“Consort Yang”), was a musician, legendary beauty, and the last principal consort of Emperor Xuanzong; her death during the An Lushan Rebellion was memorialized in "Song of Everlasting Sorrow". And as I was looking through the massive Complete Tang Poetry anthology, I stumbled across a poem attributed to her.
I like the opening out from an indoor scene into effects on the outside world, the expanding then contracting scales, and the interlocking parallels of smoke | wind || mist | water. It's not a profound poem, but it's both graceful and intricately constructed. The yun of the dancer's name is cloud, but I don't think the clouds in the poem are supposed to represent her -- the clouds are acted upon, while her dancing is otherwise the agent of all the motion.
(I did, btw, come across a poem by the dancer.)
---L.