Saturday, 12 October 2019

lnhammer: the Chinese character for poetry, red on white background (Default)
At the ends of branches, lotus flowers
Send forth red buds amid the mountains.
Silent brook mouth, without people—
Disordered, they open and then scatter.

    Green dike, spring grasses, all combined ...
    Descendent of kings, stop this joking.
    This bitter scene, with flattened flowers—
    And you, confusing them with lotus.

辛夷坞

木末芙蓉花,
山中发红萼。
涧户寂无人,
纷纷开且落。

    绿堤春草合,
    王孙自留玩。
    况有辛夷花,
    色与芙蓉乱。

Wang returns to earlier causes of melancholy, but now without explicit moping. The flowers of Magnolia liliiflora do somewhat resemble lotus blooms, and Wang deliberately confuses them in an echo of his friend’s arrival in #9. And Pei’s response? —that’s not just mocking, but outright mockery.

—L.

About

Warning: contents contain line-breaks.

As language practice, I like to translate poetry. My current project is Chinese, with practice focused on Tang Dynasty poetry. Previously this was classical Japanese, most recently working through the Kokinshu anthology (archived here). Suggestions, corrections, and questions always welcome.

There's also original pomes in the journal archives.

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