Seven Poets from the Tang Dynasty
Translated by Weining Wang
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Two poems by Du Fu
In the second Year of the Zhide region period of the emperor Suzong of the Tang dynasty, I left the Imperial Capital from the Gate of Golden Light on my way to Feng Xiang then in the early days of the Qianyuan period, I was transferred from my position in the imperial chancellery to serve as a local official in Hua Zhou. Parting with Friends and Family once again, I went through this gate and recalled past misfortune.
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Once this was the escape road,
Where west of the city the rebels marauded.
Even now, I am shaken to my core,
Among the dead, there may be yet some homeless souls.
I had recently returned to the capital;
I was banished without my lord’s consent.
I have no talent and no time, daily my hair grows greyer;
Reigning in my horse, I turn around, aspiring earnestly,
to the thousand doors of the imperial palaces.
A Poem Presented To Hermit Weiba
In our lives, we moved
like Orion and Antares, never meeting.
What a night tonight is! We can talk by candlelight.
The vigor of youth doesn’t long;
Our hair-suddenly white at the temples.
Half of our friends have passed away,
Shocked, I felt sick at heart.
It might be another twenty years,
before I visit your hall again.
Last time, when we met together, you were still unmarried;
Today, you have lots of sons and daughters,
They greeted me with smiles and asked me:
“Where do you come from?”
I opened my mouth but nothing to say,
My friends let his children put the meals on the table:
Spring chives cut in the evening rain;
And flesh cooked yellow rice.
You sighed,
When we will next time meet again?
We drank many cups of wine at once,
Yet those many cups cannot make us drunk,
I feel our friendship has lasted long,
Tomorrow will be separated by high mountains,
We don’t know what happened in the future,
We have been shrouded in the vast life.
Sympathy of Farmers
By Li Shen
1
At high noon farmers plant crops,
Their sweat drips into the farmland.
Do you know how we got the food on a plate?
every grain is the fruit of hard work.
2
A farmer sows a seed in spring,
He can get ten thousand grains in autumn.
There is no empty land under the sky,
Many farmers still died of hunger.
Thoughts of a quiet night
By Li Bai
A ray of moonlight was shining on the stone balustrade,
I wondered: could it be frost on the ground?
Looking up at the sky, I found a bright moon.
I looked down and missed my hometown.
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On the double Ninth Festival Thinking of my Brothers in Shandong
(On September 9th Missing my Brothers in Shandong)
By Wang Wei
I was a lonely stranger who stayed in a foreign town,
I missed family members more during the festival.
I imagined that, my brother climbed mountains today,
And they wore cornel together without me.
An Informal letter after coming home
By He Zhizhang
I left young and returned back old,
I still speak in my local accent, however,
My hair became grey.
The children met me with a smile.
They did not know me and asked,
“Where did you come from, sir?”
Untitled
By Li Shangyin
I don’t know why my lyre has fifty strings.
When I touched each string, I recalled my lost youth.
A hermit became a butterfly in his dreams,
An emperor gave his heart to a cuckoo.
A mermaid burst into tears in the moonlight,
A jade turned into ash in the sunshine.
I can wait to recapture these feelings,
But, alas, time has moved on.
An Ancient lane
By Liu Yuxi
Near the Rose-finch bridge, the wild grass overgrown,
The light from the sitting sun warms the old lane.
Some swallows stopped on the noble palaces,
Now, they are flying into the normal people’s home.
Two Poems by Weining Wang
One
In my first Year at College, I translated some poems from classical Chinese to Modern English. I found a secret after translating my work: There is no road for me to the past!
I had spent time to try to follow a lonely soul,
I transformed from modern America to ancient China.
The journey started from the imperial capital,
Going east across Chang’an, Luo Yang and Mount Tai.
On a hazy night like tonight, I came here,
Du Fu, you kept waiting for so long!
We met together in the little hut,
Without lush food but with our hearts,
Without poetical words but with our tears
I knew you were asking questions of virtue and life.
I go out in the night rain and cut the chives,
I cook the yellow rice and drank cups of wine,
Drinking many cups of wine, I turn around,
Finding some pencils to make records,
However, you just dropped out of sight.
“please, write down these poems.” a voice said,
I cannot find any words! I lost my memory! I slapped my face!
I failed! I have nowhere to go! I had run out of road!
If I go down a road that is a dead end, I will be dead.
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Two
2319.
A sequel to the novel: The Journey to the West
Many antiques were uncovered in the former site of the Longxi academy. However, the first half of this poem was the only existing document in these ruins.
The poem says:
During the Mid-Ming dynasty, the empire declined,
The emperors and ministers seldom met.
In order to change the kingdom’s fate,
The Jiaqing emperor swallowed elixirs, at any rate.
Until he was dying, he realized,
How he missed his son.
The fun emperor Shenzhong had never been to court,
Loyalists tried to make reforms with their might.
His father named him “Jun”,
Meaning “the power of the kingdom”.
But, he was too young to bear the burden .
No voices could reach the emperor’s ears,
Virtuous ministers were excluded , owing to dark officialdom.
Upstairs,in heaven, the vermilion gates did not open,
Downstairs, in hell, the evil spirits felt hard times.
There was a talented scholar coming from the south,
Looking to acquire fame and rank.
When he was young,
He wished to become an official,
He was fond of literature and stayed at Longxi academy.
When he was old,
His mother was sickly and weak,
He had been living on string.
In his stories:
Foxes, monkeys and hundreds of spirits,
All of them were heroes.
They were born out of myths and burn themselves.
In his dreams:
Cloud palace, Golden arches and monster execution block,
Hold by the imperial hand .
Cart Slow, Scarlet-Purple and Buddhist Kingdoms,
They represent the areas of Beijing, Tianjing and Hebei.
The fairies and gods of heaven,
Enjoy the immortal peaches and elixirs;
The fox and bull demon king,
Only a story of a doomed love affair.
What a pity that stories have torn and lost.
We have no way to know inside.
On the other side of the ocean,
It was translated from Chinese to English.
It was an endless night for the poor scholar.
He closed eyes and sat in meditation.
In the morning,
He looked up to the sky,
“I’ve been on cloud nine.
Who knows what is life in the Ming dynasty?”
Maybe, the scholar foraged for rice bran and grassroots,
However, he wrote his stories with golden advice.
Six hundred years later,
The paper and documents turned into sand.
If we can find ourselves in previous life,
We will meet with the Tang monk in a distant land.
We laugh at ourselves and don’t feel strange.
It was the land of our forebears:
All the papers, documents and the creator,
They would become cultural relics.
We will go easily between land and sky,
We will go down into the earth before opening our mouths.
Maybe we can remember a poor scholar,
He used to write these stories in his mind.
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