Lyrics to a Forgotten Tune
by Wang Guowei
Does something real lie in the words
to these new songs of yours?
To maiden heads such fancy phrases
sound laughably soft-core*
“Lamplight o’er a broken heart…”
now, who’d you write that for?
Behind my desk I peer around
at recent works of mine
Then dim the lights and reckon out
the joys of bygone times
All trivial passions of the heart
where not one line aligns
* In Chinese, this line reads like a pun about puns. The term 綺語 means either “ornate writing, fancy phrasing” or more euphemistically “smutty language, erotica.” The term 胡盧 means “loud laughter” or “calabash, bottle gourd” (in this latter sense also written 葫蘆.) Calabash may be used to allude to the closed world of women, to various hidden forbidden delights, or to the vagina and the delights sequestered therein. It could be read to mean “ornate writing like this is just hilarious” or else connotatively as something like “this kind of innuendo belongs between the sheets.” To top it off 綺語 is also a homophone for 岐語 “double entendre”
浣溪沙
本事新詞定有無，
這般綺語太胡盧。
燈前腸斷為誰書？
隱几窺君新製作，
背燈數妾舊歡愉。
區區情事總難符。
Yearning in Two Places at Once
(Lyrics to the tune of “A Cut of Plum”)
by Li Qingzhao
Now fragrance of red lotus fades,
the mat feels autumn-blown.
I loosen my gauze robe for bed,
the boat I float in on my own*.
Who’s sent a lover’s brocade letter
this way across the clouds?
Skywriting geese** return as moonlight
fills the chill tower of one alone***
Flowers fall and scatter on their own
as waters run and drain.
A singular longing links us in
two places with one pointless pain.
This feeling clings and I can’t find it
in me to put it out.
It only falls out of the face
to surface in the heart again.
*- The original literally says “I board my magnolia boat alone”. A boat of magnolia wood was a traditional image for any fine vessel, especially a poet’s, and was by extension used to refer to a bed.
**- The migratory wild goose is a traditional symbol of mutual yearning, a legendary bearer of lovers’ messages. The original says literally “character geese”. The shape of a flock of geese was often likened to a character 一 “one” or, if in a v-shape, 人 “person”.
***- A woman waiting for her absent beloved atop a watchtower, scanning the countryside for any sign of his return was a stock image. The original says “moonlight fills the Western Tower”. The “Western Tower” in this genre is by convention a woman’s dwelling or chamber.
一剪梅
紅藕香殘玉簟秋。
輕解羅裳，
獨上蘭舟。
雲中誰寄錦書來？
雁字回時，
月滿西樓。
花自飄零水自流。
一種相思，
兩處閒愁。
此情無計可消除，
才下眉頭，
卻上心頭。
Song of the Caged Goshawk
by Liu Zongyuan
High as the chill winds hiss and shrill, in flight with the hard frost,
The skyward-striking scouring Goshawk swerves in dawn-lit day,
Mighty mist-splinterer, cloud-cleaver, rainbow-render, darting
Down thunder-sudden to skim hillocks like a ricochet.
In a hard swoosh his strapping quills cut through the thorn and bramble,
He falls to snatch a fox or hare then soars again in gray.
With fur-caked claws and blood-drunk beak, the frightener of fowl,
He stands alone to scan the world and lords above his prey.
But summer-molten months and blistering winds come of a sudden.
His molted feathers fall. Heart hewn, he broods and lies at bay.
Grass-rover rats and racoon-dogs become his persecution.
Ten times a night he stares about in shellshock and dismay,
Left with one wish: for pinion-swelling Fall to blast him free
To scale the clouds uncaged again, and wind his natural way.
籠鷹詞
淒風淅瀝飛嚴霜
蒼鷹上擊翻曙光
雲披霧裂虹蜺斷
霹靂掣電捎平岡
砉然勁翮翦荊棘
下攫狐兔騰蒼茫
爪毛吻血百鳥逝
獨立四顧時激昂
炎風溽暑忽然至
羽翼脫落自摧藏
草中狸鼠足為患
一夕十顧驚且傷
但願清商複為假
拔去萬累雲間翔
Moon Over Frontier Mountains
by Bao Junhui
Risen high, the moon of fall
Glows north on a Liaoyang barricade.
The border is far. The moon gleams farther.
Ice-bows flash as winds invade.
Soldiers gaze back: home beats at the heart
And war-steeds balk at the beat of a drum.
The north wind grieves in the frontier grass
And barbarous sands hide hordes to come.
Frost freezes the sword blade into its sheath.
Wind wears the banners to bits on the plain.
Oh someday, someday, to bow near the palace
And never hear camp-gongs clang again.
關山月
高高秋月明，
北照遼陽城。
塞迥光初滿，
風多暈更生。
徵人望鄉思，
戰馬聞鼙驚。
朔風悲邊草，
胡沙暗虜營。
霜凝匣中劍，
風憊原上旌。
早晚謁金闕，
不聞刁斗聲。
Waiting On Him (To the tune of “Bowing to the Moon”)
Anonymous
Off to another land my wayward man has gone
But now New Year has well-nigh come
And he has not made it home
I hate his love that runs like water
So reckless and so ready to roam
He couldn’t care less for home
Beneath the flowers I turn and pray
To the powers of heaven and earth and say
To this very day
He has left me in this empty room alone
I see above me the blues of heaven’s dome
I am sure the moon and stars and sun
Must know the pain I’ve seen
I lean beside the window screen
And let the tears come streaming down
On my gold-beaded silken gown
And cry away at unlucky fate
And how messed up my karma has become
Still I pray I see his face
And I swear I’ll give him hell when he gets home
拜新月
蕩子他州去
已經新歲未還歸
堪恨情如水
到處輙狂迷
不思家國
花下遙指祝神明
直至于今
拋妾獨守空閨
上有宆蒼在
三光也合遙知
倚帡幃坐
淚流點滴
金縷羅衣
—自嗟薄命
緣業至于思
乞求待見面
誓辜伊
Translator’s Note:
The poems translated here are rendered with consideration to form and rhyme, in response to what is now the dominant mode of translating classical Chinese verse into English. The audio recording contains the first three poems here, read in Chinese and then in English. The latter two are read in an approximate reconstruction of how (certain) Chinese speakers (might have) pronounced the text at a time of early reception. Thus, while I read Wang Guowei’s poem with modern Mandarin pronunciation, I read Li Qingzhao’s and Liu Zongyuan’s poems in hypothetical reconstructions of certain late 12th and early 9th century dialects, respectively.
Wang Guowei’s poem was written in the early 20th century. To my mind, the poet realizes, as he writes in the classical style, that what he’s saying doesn’t match what he’s thinking. Traditional poetry once had a vital social function, served as a means of refined expression, and was normatively presumed to be non-fictional. Now it corresponds to no reality whatsoever. It’s become a heap of clichés that don’t align with the world he knows, an arabesque of refined word games.
Liu’s poem (commonly read as allegory for his exile in a tradition where autobiographical reference is often simply assumed) is distinctive for use of sound. If I had to pick a single Tang poem where knowledge of medieval Chinese pronunciation could enrich one’s reading, it would be this one. Here, Liu packs in checked-tone syllables ending in the stop consonants /k/, /t/ and /p/ (which do not survive in Mandarin but do in some other forms of Chinese, such as Cantonese). They make up 27% of the syllables in this text, a far greater proportion than would be expected to occur by chance. Every line has at least one, and they are concentrated overwhelmingly in the first sections of lines. In my reading, it emphasizes the bird’s speed and ferocity in hunting, and the cramped and thrashing discomfort of confinement. I have taken the liberty of packing the English translation with some rather audible sound play.
“Bowing to the Moon,” is a popular song from the mid-Tang dynasty from a collection recovered in a scroll-cave at Dunhuang. Unlike much verse in this genre in the early period, this lyric may have actually been composed by a woman, rather than by a man in a woman’s voice.
Wang Guowei (1877-1927) was a Chinese poet and historian. Born in Haining, he worked in Shanghai as a newspaper proofreader after failing the imperial examination. He studied Japanese and eventually studied natural sciences in Tokyo for a year, followed by a study of German idealism. He left for Japan again during the Xinhai Revolution of 1911, and returned to China 5 years later remaining a loyalist of the overthrown Qing emperor. He was appointed professor at Tsinghua university in 1924 and committed suicide by drowning in 1927 in Kunming Lake before the NRA entered Beijing.
Li Qingzhao (1084-1151) is traditionally held to be China’s greatest woman poet. She led a colorful life as a scholar of history, a literary critic, an art collector specializing in bronze inscriptions, a painter, calligrapher, and poet. She is considered the finest writer of cí poetry, lyric verse set to tunes of the Song Dynasty.
Liu Zongyuan (773 – 819), born in present-day Shanxi, was a philosopher, poet, and politician of the Tang dynasty. Along with Han Yu, he was a founder of the 古文運動 “Classical Prose Movement.” In 805 after falling out of favor with the government, he found himself exiled first to Yongzhou and then to Liuzhou. During his exile he composed a considerable volume of verse and prose.
Bao Junhui (fl. 790s) was a poet of late eighth century China who achieved fame during the reign of Emperor Dezong during the Tang. Little is known of her. Widowed young with no brothers, she was invited by Dezong to the palace alongside other talented women of letters.
A. Z. Foreman is a translator, poet, and language-acquisition addict working on a doctorate in Near Eastern Languages at the Ohio State University. His translations from Arabic, Chinese, Latin, Occitan, Ukrainian, Russian, Irish, and Yiddish have appeared in publications like Metamorphoses, Brazen Head, Asymptote, and the Penguin Book of Russian Poetry. He’s voiced John Wycliff in a documentary by Catherine Warr and Wang Wei in a video-essay by Jacob Geller in historical accents. He also writes his own poetry when he must. Importantly, if you have a dog he’d love to pet it. Find him on YouTube here.
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