A Changgan Ballad, Li Bai (300 Tang Shi #43)

(Okay, to get the taste of #44 out of my mouth, here’s a better representation of an ideal Tang wife, even if it too is according to a man.)

When this one’s hair just fringed her forehead,
I broke off flowers, romped in the yard.
My husband rode a bamboo horse—
We’d round the well, playing with plums.
Together we lived in Changgan town,
Two children without hate or doubt.
At fourteen, we were lord and wife:
Shame-faced, without experience,
I bowed my head, facing dark walls—
A thousand calls, but not one answer.
At fifteen, I relaxed my brows,
Hoping we’re joined till dust and ashes.
I learned to truly “hold your pillar”—
But how could I look up at Husband?
At sixteen, my lord went far off
To Yanyu Reef in Qutang Gorge—
In Fifth Month, when boats won’t strike rock—
Where apes cry out, sorrowing heaven.
Before the gate where you dragged your feet,
In every print the green moss grows—
And though moss deepens, I can’t sweep
Leaves dropped by early autumn winds.
It’s Eighth Month: butterflies arrive,
Pairs flying to west garden plants.
Feeling all this, this one’s heartsick,
Waiting anxious, red face aging.
When you depart those Sichuan towns,
Please send home word in advance,
For I’ll come greet you—it’s not far—
I’ll straightway come to Changfeng Bank.

长干行
妾发初覆额，
折花门前剧；
郎骑竹马来，
绕床弄青梅。
同居长干里，
两小无嫌猜。
十四为君妇，
羞颜未尝开；
低头向暗壁，
千唤不一回，
十五始展眉，
愿同尘与灰；
常存抱柱信，
岂上望夫台？
十六君远行，
瞿塘滟滪堆；
五月不可触，
猿鸣天上哀。
门前迟行迹，
一一生绿苔；
苔深不能扫，
落叶秋风早。
八月蝴蝶来，
双飞西园草。
感此伤妾心，
坐愁红颜老。
早晚下三巴，
预将书报家；
相迎不道远，
直至长风沙。

Is it possible to translate this without hearing the cadences of Ezra Pound pacing behind your shoulder? I doubt it. I haven’t glanced at his version, and won’t till I finish revising, but still he’s there. This is actually the first of a two-poem set—the second was not included in 300TP, and now I want to do that too.

“Changgan Ballad” was a tune, which this was written to be sung to. Changgan was a city on the Yangzi that’s now downtown modern Nanjing, especially associated at the time with river merchants and freight carriers. Laments by the homebound wife of a river-traveling husband were a genre (see for ex #260), but this dramatic monologue tips several conventions on their sides, including making the speaker an active agent in the end.

Lost in translation: the plums are “blue.” Idiom rendered literally: hold a pillar is an allusion to a lover who made an assignation under a bridge, and stayed there even during a flood, holding onto a support pillar till he drowned, making him a type for someone who keeps his word no matter what. For millennia, the reef at the mouth of Qutang, the uppermost of the Three Gorges, was navigable for only part of the year when the water rose high enough, traditionally in the Fifth Month. Idiom: Sichuan towns is literally “three Ba [districts],” Ba being the old name for eastern Sichuan. Changfeng (“long wind”) is in modern Anqing, Anhui, about 700 li/200 mi from Nanjing, which is only part of the thousand miles to the top of Qutang, but still quite a journey for her.

Every "I" is an implicit pronoun supplied in translation -- the speaker uses an explicit first-person pronoun only twice, with the humble form used only by women that I render, as usual, as "this one."

---L.