Seeing Off a Friend, Li Bai (300 Tang Shi #102)

Blue mountains piled on northern walls,
White water loops the eastern city—
There’s just one way to leave this land:
Ten-thousand li, alone, disheveled.
The drifting clouds, a traveler’s thoughts—
The setting sun, an old friend’s love.
Waving your hand you now depart,
Your team of horses whinnying off.

送友人
青山横北郭，
白水绕东城。
此地一为别，
孤蓬万里征。
浮云游子意，
落日故人情。
挥手自兹去，
萧萧班马鸣。



I have a new strategy for tackling the deceptively simple poems of Li Bai: make my first draft using five-beat lines as smooth as possible, and then revise it to four-beat lines, which forces me to resort to more ambiguity. This is a four-beat revision of a previously posted five-beat draft. (This strategy didn’t work for #101, alas.)

---L.