When I look at the Sky - 當我看天時

Someone learning English on italki wrote the following poem,

When I Look at the Sky 

When I look at the sky at night
(This is one of my favorite moments)
There is like a sad face on the moon
Or maybe it's the reflection of how I feel when I look at the sky 

I edited to,

Upon the night sky I looked,
tis a favorite moment of mine.
Sad face on the moon I saw,
As I looked at the moon.
Perhaps, a reflected emotion of mine...

It is a nice imagery. So I decided to translate into a Classical Chinese poetic form but was unsuccessful because the cultural tone is so different. In the end, I gave up but I was inspired to write it from scratch using the theme of her first line.  In the end, the result is something that is totally different from what I had started.

1 銀夜看天醉樂時 It’s time to be merry and get drunk looking at a silvery night sky,
2 愁月寂寞廣寒綺  Beautiful is the Lunar Palace but sad and lonely.
3 未央曾經金屋夢 The Palace of Not-Quite-Zenith was once upon a House of Gold.
4 君心千里長門似 A thousand miles away my Lord’s heart is at and I am like in the Long Gate Palace.

1.Only in the later lines that we know “sky” represents the face of the Emperor and the moon, the Empress.

3. Not- Quite-In-Zenith means that it is still rising and flourishing. Once the zenith is reached, whatever afterwards is descendance. This palace is where Han Emperors lived. The “House of Gold” or the “Golden House” is an allusion of the story when Emperor Wu was still a child of six. He was instructed to say, “If I can marry Ah Chiao (阿嬌) I will build her a house of gold when asked by his aunt, the Princess Royal. Ah Chiao was the only child of hers. This aunt is the elder sister of Emperor Wen and favorite of their mother, the Empress Dowager. As a doting and filial son, whatever the mother wished, he will acquiesce. The Princess Royal was afraid that her position and influence will be diminished when the mother dies. She wanted to marry her daughter to the son of the Emperor’s favorite concubine and was rebuffed. In humiliation, she worked against her through Emperor Wu other consorts. Without this political marriage, Emperor Wu would not have ascended the throne.

4. Ah Chiao never bore the Emperor any children because of their frequent bickering. After the Grand Empress Dowager died and his power consolidated, he demoted Ah Chiao from her position of Empress and banished her to the Long Gate Palace and never set foot to see her again.

So this poem is about the time before she was banished from the Emperor’s abode.

Tuesday, September 24/25, 2019