A Cicada, Li Shangyin (300 Tang Shi #156)

Here at the roots, since you can’t eat your fill,
You futilely resent your pointless noise:
By fifth watch, it’s infrequent, trailing off,
Although the whole tree’s green and still uncaring.
This lowly official’s just a ‘branch that floats’—
Back home, the weeds already have grown up.
Your troubled call reminds me most of all:
My family also is all poor but honest.

蝉
本以高难饱，
徒劳恨费声。
五更疏欲断，
一树碧无情。
薄宦梗犹泛，
故园芜已平。
烦君最相警，
我亦举家清。



It was believed at the time that cicadas ate wind and drank dew, which is difficult to do at the base of a tree. The fifth watch of the night corresponds to roughly 3-5 am. The floating branch is an idiom derived from a Warring States chronicle comparing an official getting reassigned every few years to a broken peach branch floating on a river. Lost in translation: the tree is “jade-green.”

Not only does Li Shangyin directly address something of nature, but with an honorific “you.” This is unlike any poem I’ve translated from Chinese—which underscores that he was indeed an original poet. (He’s also just as difficult as Du Fu, though for different reasons, and for what it’s worth I had to render it more freely than usual to make it comprehensible.)

---L.