Poetry Translations

I enjoy the challenge of translating Chinese poems.

Autumn Night Song is a 7-character jueju by Zhang Zhongsu, Tang dynasty.

The steady drip of the water clock marks the many hours of darkness;
Scattered hazy clouds unveil moonbeams.
Autumn spurs hidden insects to nightlong chirping.
I haven’t sent his winter clothes: let the frost stay away!

Du Fu‘s melancholy “Spring Scene” was written during the chaos and destruction  of the An Lushan rebellion.
There are many different translations, for example.
This is mine:
Mountains round the ruined city,
Spring-grown grass on walls and towers.
Weeping in the time of flowers,
Birdsong jars the parted heart.
Three long months the beacons burned,
No gold worth a loving letter.
White head thinned by fearful fretting,
Cannot hold a single pin.

A ci-poem by Wen Tingyun, poet of the late Tang dynasty.   Ci-poems have a “tune” that guides their rhythm and rhyme.  There are many such tunes.  This poem is based on the tune called “Deva-like Barbarian” or “Bodhisattva Savage”.

Hills like heaped gold are quenched,
Her cloud of hair loves the scent of her powdered cheek.
Languidly she draws in her moth eyebrows,
Plays with her hairpins and comb, washing slowly

Blooms surround her in the mirror.
The faces of the flowers seem like the reflections of friends
Newlywed, she dutifully embroiders the gauze jacket
With a pair of golden partridges.

File:Zhou Fang. Court Ladies Wearing Flowered Headdresses.Detail1.jpg
Ladies wearing Flower in their Hair by Zhou Fang