A Quiet Moon

I was on a roll. After completing the previous poem which took me days to do so, I was able to do this within an hour using a similar rhyming scheme…

1 夜靜月                 Moon over a quiet night,
2 十年依窗借光閱  Studying for ten years by the window in borrowed light.
3 鵲橋散                The magpie bridge had dispersed,
4 雙星淚淋別        Two stars weeping away as they depart from each other.

5 萬卷缺                Still countless volumes to be read,
6 蟾宮折桂難         'tis difficult to break the Osmanthus bough in the Toad Palace.
7 安得鰲頭奪         How can I, the Number One scholar be?

8 寒霜雪                Snow and frost upon the windowsill,
9 嫦娥對無說        Nary a word, the Goddess of the Moon looks on in silence.

2 The scholar is so poor that he could not even afford candles for his nightly study.

3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qixi_Festival

4 Vega and Altair - the Spinning Maid and the Cowherd Stars.  This line conveys the sense of time passing away, that is mid autumn is ending or that the scholar and his wife had to be parted as he has to journey to the capital for the imperial examinations.

5 Literally, “ten thousand scrolls lacking”. Before the invention of paper, books were written in scrolls of bamboo strips. “to be read” is not in the original but implied.

6 It is believed that a three legged toad lives in the moon. Hence, another name for the moon. Breaking the Osmanthus bough means to be successful in the imperial examinations. It came from a story about an emperor , 晉武帝 asking his minister for a self-criticism. His answer was, “I am but a piece of an Osmanthus bough in the moon and a piece of Jade in the Jasper Pool of the Kunlun mountains”. An Osmanthus tree is another denizen of the moon and the Jasper Pool is a fairy pool in the abode of the Queen Mother of the West, 西王母.

7 Before the imperial steps leading to the throne is a bas relief of a dragon tortoise head. Only the Number One Scholar may stand on it. This gives rise to the saying, 獨占鰲頭 – monopolizing the Dragon Turtle’s head.

9 The main denizen of the moon. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chang'e. This line can also be interpreted as, “Speechless that I am looking at the Goddess of the Moon”.  Here the goddess is a represents his virtuous wife who had been helping to ease his burden of his study by being attentive to him, to provide for him an conducive study environment.   "...upon the window sill" is not in the original text but used as a filler in the translation to make things clearer. Anything can be used as it does not distract from the main idea.

Monday, February 14, 2022