飛霜雨 Rain of Fluttering Frost

As of 01 Dec 2017, I had written fifty-one Chinese poems but mostly not of worth or interesting enough to put online.  Also in part due to my laziness and my addiction in playing Throne Rush which I had recently weaned myself from.

This poem was the result of now having more time for myself as I practised my Chinese brush writing.

風過方知秋夜涼  The wind passes that I realized the cold of the autumn night,

樓空人情更無常  Empty are the towers, such is the impermanence of relationships.

忽視飛霜雨幾片 Suddenly I espied a few frosty flakes fluttering down,

醉醺紅塵夢一塲 Inebriating and perfuming this world of mortals to let me dream awhile.

The last two sentences are interesting as the meaning changes depending on how they are parsed.  The translation above was done by parsing the characters in groups of two-two-three where 雨 and 夢 are verbs and treating the third line not as a question.  As a question, the translation would be, Suddenly I espied frosty flakes, how many are fluttering down?

If the lines are parsed as groups of two-three-two, then 雨 and 夢 act as nouns of the adjective phrase.  So we have 飛霜雨 flying frost rain and 紅塵夢 red dust dream. With this, the third line grammatically can no longer be a question.

Suddenly I espied a few flakes from a rain of fluttering frost,

Inebriating a dream of the mortal world

Friday, December 01, 2017