AFTER LI QING ZHAO'S
"THINNER THAN YELLOW FLOWERS"
Mist and
heavy sky.
All day
my sadness.
Another
year come
and gone.
Midnight's
chill is
moving through
the curtains.
Earlier,
my cup
of wine,
my evening
sweetness.
Now the wind,
breaking me
like a flower.
AFTER HE ZHU'S
"SPRING NIGHT"
Evening fades
at the edge
of the house.
A crow perches
in darkness
on the willow.
A woman
and the moon
pluck a plum
blossom. She
plays with its
fragrance and
goes back inside.
She closes
the curtains.
Tonight's wind is
just as cold
as last night's.
AFTER LU YOU'S
"MY HOME"
I am too lazy
to learn to garden.
I only want to fish,
to watch the swallows
along the river,
the seagulls settling
on the sandbars.
I only want to sing,
to hear my oars working,
to drink dew-clear wine
and eat this salt-fish
which tastes like flowers.
When anyone asks
"Where do you live?"
I smile and point.
My boat is my home.
AFTER HE ZHU'S
"ENJOY THE SPRING
AT OLD AGE"
I don't believe spring
tires of old men.
Old men can't see
too many springs.
Laughing and singing,
we enjoy the season.
Don't be upset
if I drink too much.
What is real
is only real
when you're drunk.
AFTER TWO LINES
FROM LI YU'S
"MY LOST KINGDOM"
Ask me how
much sorrow
I can bear.
I am like
a river
flooding.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: I read
only a few characters of Chinese, so these poems are more properly
"transportations" rather than translations. I've tried to read every
available translation of these poems and I still saw the poems struggling to
come over into contemporary English. These are my attempts to free these poems
and let the poets say now what they were trying to say then.
Tom Montag's books of poetry include: Making Hay & Other Poems; Middle Ground; The Big Book of Ben Zen; In This Place: Selected Poems 1982-2013; This Wrecked World; The Miles No One Wants; Imagination's Place; Love Poems; and Seventy at Seventy. Two new collections, The River Will Tell You and Maybe Holy: Six Old Monk Poems are forthcoming. His poem 'Lecturing My Daughter in Her First Fall Rain' has been permanently incorporated into the design of the Milwaukee Convention Center. He blogs at The Middlewesterner. With David Graham he recently co-edited Local News: Poetry About Small Towns.
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