Cold Thoughts, Li Shangyin (Tang Shi #159)

When you departed, waves were at my threshold—
Cicadas now rest, dew’s full upon the branches.
I’ll ever carry memories of that season;
I lean upon the door as time flows on.
Under the North Dipper, spring is far from you;
Here in South Hill, your messenger is late.
On Heaven’s shore, I keep divining my dreams.
Surely I’m wrong: you haven’t made new friends.

凉思
客去波平槛，
蝉休露满枝。
永怀当此节，
倚立自移时。
北斗兼春远，
南陵寓使迟。
天涯占梦数，
疑误有新知。



So I took another break from quatrains to make another stab at regulated verse, but forgot the notorious difficulty of Li Shangyin: this is really compacted language (modern Mandarin verse translations run to 12 characters per line, expanded from the original’s 5), and it took hand-holding from commentaries to even grasp the basic meaning. South Hill (translated to parallel the Dipper) is Nanling, now a county in Anhui, a little south of the lower Yangzi, where Li was stationed for a while.

---L.