Classic Poem

BY LI T'AI-PO

(The Woman Speaks)

The colour of the day is over; flowers hold the mist in their lips.
The bright moon is like glistening silk. I cannot sleep for grief.
The tones of the Chao psaltery begin and end on the bridge of the silver-crested love-pheasant.
I wish I could play my Shu table-lute on the mandarin duck strings.
The meaning of this music — there is no one to receive it.
I desire my thoughts to follow the Spring wind, even to the Swallow Mountains.
I think of my Lord far, far away, remote as the Green Heaven.
In old days, my eyes were like horizontal waves;
Now they flow, a spring of tears.
If you do not believe that the bowels of your Unworthy One are torn and severed,
Return and take up the bright mirror I was wont to use.
( The Man Speaks ]
We think of each other eternally.
My thoughts are at Ch'ang An.
The Autumn cricket chirps beside the railing of the Golden Well;
The light frost is chilly, chilly; the colour of the bamboo sleeping mat is cold.
The neglected lamp does not burn brightly. My thoughts seem broken off.
I roll up the long curtain and look at the moon — it is useless, I sigh continually.
The Beautiful, Flower-like One is as far from me as the distance of the clouds.
Above is the brilliant darkness of a high sky,
Below is the rippling surface of the clear water.
Heaven is far and the road to it is long; it is difficult for a man's soul to compass it in flight.
Even in a dream my spirit cannot cross the grievous barrier of hills.
We think of each other eternally.
My heart and my liver are snapped in two.