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Border Songs 2, Wang Changling (300 Tang Shi #37)
Friday, 4 March 2022 07:48Water my horse—then cross the autumn water.
The water’s cold—the wind is like a knife.
Empty sands—the sun has not yet sunk.
It’s dark, so dark—I see the Lintao River.
In ancient days, they fought before the Great Wall:
Everyone says their spirits were so high—
They’ve all become the yellow dust, now old,
Their white bones scattered in among the weeds.
塞下曲 之二
饮马渡秋水，
水寒风似刀。
平沙日未没，
黯黯见临洮。
昔日长城战，
咸言意气高；
黄尘足今古，
白骨乱蓬蒿。
Second of a four-poem set. The last two are not in 300TP, but I may translate them anyway, just to find out what they’re like—were they worse poems? —wrong theme? —too erotic? —politically problematic?
We previously met the frontier river Lintao in central Gansu, not far from the western reaches of the Great Wall, in #42 and #252. FWIW, it’s a couple hundred miles almost due west of the Xiao Pass of #36. Lost in translation: the weeds are literally “horseweed and wormwood.”
---L.
The water’s cold—the wind is like a knife.
Empty sands—the sun has not yet sunk.
It’s dark, so dark—I see the Lintao River.
In ancient days, they fought before the Great Wall:
Everyone says their spirits were so high—
They’ve all become the yellow dust, now old,
Their white bones scattered in among the weeds.
塞下曲 之二
饮马渡秋水，
水寒风似刀。
平沙日未没，
黯黯见临洮。
昔日长城战，
咸言意气高；
黄尘足今古，
白骨乱蓬蒿。
Second of a four-poem set. The last two are not in 300TP, but I may translate them anyway, just to find out what they’re like—were they worse poems? —wrong theme? —too erotic? —politically problematic?
We previously met the frontier river Lintao in central Gansu, not far from the western reaches of the Great Wall, in #42 and #252. FWIW, it’s a couple hundred miles almost due west of the Xiao Pass of #36. Lost in translation: the weeds are literally “horseweed and wormwood.”
---L.