A Drunkard's Poem - 醉人詩

 
醉里作詩三十首, In [my] inebriation, 30 poems were composed,
醒來一句也難留. Upon awakening, nary a single word was retained.
可憐小我無知罪, Pity the little innocent me of not realizing my fault,
偷改高人不覺羞. In trying to change the masters' without shame

花落矯情空折柳, Falling blooms, pretentious and vain while listening to "The Breaking of Willow's Bough",
雁飛拼字亂悲秋. Ansers flying, rhyming wrongly, in chaotic sadness of autumn.
今宵封筆金樽伴, Tonight, my brush will be sealed, and the golden goblet be my companion
借酒佯裝萬古愁. Using wine as an excuse and pretend to lament the sorrows of eternity.

David Fang posted this in Chinese Poetry :

Translating this witty one into a decent English version is way beyond my capability. So I just give a rough explanation briefly:

1. Compose 30 poems while drunkard,
2. Awaken, I can not keep even just one.
3. Forgive poor me so innocent,
4. Shame on me for stealing poems from masters.
5. Seeing flowers fall, I gather emotion to "break the willow",
6. As swallows fly away, I jumble words to lament the Autumn.
7. Tonight I shall lock up the pen, fetch a very nice glass,
7. With help of wine, pretend having the million-years' old sorrows! 

I translated the poem on the fly to kill time during the pandemic...

醉里作詩三十首, In [my] inebriation, 30 poems were composed,
醒來一句也難留. Upon awakening, nary a single word was retained.
可憐小我無知罪, Pity the little innocent me of not realizing my fault,
偷改高人不覺羞. In trying to change the masters' without shame

花落矯情空折柳, Falling blooms, being pretentious and vain while listening to "The Breaking of Willow's Bough",
雁飛拼字亂悲秋. The ansers flying, rhyming wrongly, in chaotic sadness of autumn,
今宵封筆金樽伴, Tonight, my brush will be sealed, and the golden goblet be my companion
借酒佯裝萬古愁. Using wine as an excuse and pretend to lament the sorrows of eternity.

I could never come up with this sort of theme. The following is a partial conversation between me and David...

Make a short story long! Someone was pissed when I "followed" his poem and wrote a "similar one.  He accused me of "stealing", I felt so bad, so came up with this one to forgive and redeem myself......'

My reply: "'Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.  I am too then can be bashed for doing the same thing... I call it inspiration... Learning from the "masters", one can only prove.  I shall now "copy" yours and come up with a variant on the same theme :)"

At first, I tried to follow line by line but worded differently,  酒中詩仙揮百首, 醉後愚人盡無句.  However, I decided against this because it may be construed that I was correcting his poem.  To prevent such misunderstanding, I just have to proceed from a different angle while preserving the theme and his ideas i.e. in lines 3, 6, 7 and 8.

I have to thank David for without his post, this poem will remain in Never-neverland.  If I learn something new, no matter how paltry it may be, that other person is a master in my eyes.

1 風緩楊柳河畔翠 By the riverbanks, languid winds and willows green,

2 戀蝶紈扇賽花聚 Enthusiastic butterflies, silk fans and surpassing blossoms in togetherness.

3 一手筆墨另金樽 One hand with a brush dripped in ink and in the other, a golden goblet,
4 問君何解桃紅醉 To thee, why a face of stupor in peachy red?

5 醜字不識罪豈有 How is it a crime in not knowing refined words?

6 難與古人並相對 Hardly could I compare myself to those from ye days of olde,
7 酒中詩仙揮百首 In wine, a hundred poems spewed, a Li Po I had become,
8 醒後韵士盡無句 Once sobered, nary a word upon a rhymist’s lips.

2. 紈扇, a round silk fan, usually held by ladies. One of their pastimes was to “catch” butterflies (撲蝶) with it.

4.  Another translation is "Why are you inebriated under the peach red blossoms?"

5. Rhetoric question to mean the opposite! The next line confirms this. In a drunken state, even the coarse becomes refined to the author and the beholder.

6. 醜字不識 literally means “now knowing how to write the Chinese character ‘ugly’” or in English, how to spell it out. Figuratively, “unabashed, thick-skinned etc.”

7. 詩仙, “immortal poet” is a moniker given to Li Po, perhaps China’s greatest poet, because most of his poems are about things immortal or fairies. Trivia: 詩聖 - Tu Fu, 詩佛 - Wang Wei, 詩狂 - 賀知章, 詩魔 – Po Chu I, 詩鬼 - 李賀, 詩奴 - 賈島, 詩隱 - 孟浩然, 詩囚 - 孟郊, 詩傑 - 王勃, 詩豪 - 劉禹錫 and 詩神 - 蘇軾 who is the only one not from the Tang Dynasty.

8. 韵士 can also mean a person of refinement.

Before me, a beautiful scene of blooming flowers, colored butterflies and pretty girls I wished to describe but paltry words are all I could muster. No choice but to get drunk and pry out perceived words of refinement on to paper as I cannot compare with the masters of the old even though I am good at rhyming.

Friday, February 19, 2021

Autumn Thoughts By The Dresser - Variation III

 

I first wrote 仙宮雲烟鎖 while I doodled with my brush. The second line came easily. However, I had great difficulty in completing the rest. After a night of dreams and thinking, I could only refine on the first two lines until I started to listen to the flute version of 妝台秋思. Using the title of the melody, I was able to complete the third line and setting up a theme. In an hour or so, the poem was complete.

1 紫泉雲低鎖 The Purple Spring is obscured by the low-lying clouds,
2 紅塵月醉迷 And the moon in the mortal world beguiles me into a stupor.
3 妝台秋思聞 Listening to Thoughts of Autumn by the Dresser,
4 蓮池一水泥 The lotus pond must by now is just a stretch of water and mud.

5 同月共千杯 To the moon, a thousand cups had drinketh,
6 與夢度萬黎 And passed countless nights with my dreams.
7 不畏九重遠 I fear not that the palace is faraway,
8 只恐五更啼 Dreading only by the crowing of dawn.

1 Purple Spring is a pool where its purplish waters are frequented by fairies. It is also a name of a river in the Han Capital of Chang An (長安, Eternal Peace). Its original name was 紫淵, Purple Pool. However, during the Tang Dynasty, the name clashed with the personal name of Li Yuan, 李淵, the founder of the dynasty and hence the name change. Even names of gods had to be change in order to avoid such name taboos. Guan Yin, 觀音, the Goddess of Mercy is an example. Her original name was 觀世音 (to see the sounds of the vulgar world) because the name of the second Tang Emperor, Li Shih Min has the same character of 世. Here, it refers to the capital city, now known as Sian (Western Peace), the first cosmopolis in the world. It so far away that only clouds can be seen in the distance by the horizon.

2 “Red Dust”, the mundane world.

3 “Autumn Thoughts by the Dresser” is the fourth movement of an ancient Chinese melody based on the story of Wang Chao Chun. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wang_Zhaojun

4 The previous line hints of autumn and the summer represented by lotuses had withered away by now.

6 黎 means darkness.

7 Literally, 九重 means nine tiers. It could also mean the palace gate, the emperor himself etc. For all other definitions see https://cd.hwxnet.com/view/jnpbdaahapklapea.html

8 The third hour denotes midnight and each Chinese hour is equivalent to two western hours. Hence the fifth hour corresponds to the period between 5am and 6am.

This poem is trying to imagine the thoughts of Wang Chao Chun as she played the pipa while journeying to her future home in the barbaric north.

Thursday, February 18, 2021

Fairy Time - 仙界時辰

 
1 梅盡枝上桃紅熟 When plum blossoms are gone, peaches will soon ripen in red,
2 四月蓮華重陽菊 Lotuses bloom in the Month of Four before chrysanthemums of the Double Ninth
3 仙宇一日人間旬 A day in the fairyland but ten years in the mortal realm,
4 凡塵何事不匆速 Of what in the world of men not being hurried?

1 Chinese seasons are represented by the plum, peach, lotus and chrysanthemum for winter, spring, summer and autumn respectively.

2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Ninth_Festival

3 宇 originally means the top, bottom and the four directions and thus means space within. 宙means the time span from the past till present. Today, 宇宙 or 宙宇 just means the universe. 旬 means ten years of a week of ten days. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_calendar or ten years. Time goes slowly in the heavens. Some claim a day in heaven equals to a year/three years on earth. No matter by what definition, time passes slowly in heaven. This reminded me an episode of Star Trek’s Voyager – Blink of an Eye. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blink_of_an_Eye_(Star_Trek:_Voyager)

4 凡塵, “mortal dust” is a Buddhist/Taoist term for the mortal world.

Sunday, February 14, 2021

Eventuality - 凡事萬情

 
Another doodling inspiration.  This time it took me about a week refinement in the original and translation even though the first draft was done in a an hour.  It was much easier if one has put on the headphones and hearing a favorite song over and over again for that extra push.

1 仙霞紫泉胭脂楊 Fairy clouds rouged the willows in the Palace of Purple Springs,
2 莫羨長生與霓裳 Envy not the Palace of Eternal Life and the Rainbow Skirt.
3 漁歌浣女日西回 As the sun sets, fishermen’s songs return and so would the silk-washing girls,
4 閑度門前風晚涼 And pass the time relaxing in the cool night air by the front of their homes.

5 千態雲烟萬情散 A thousand miens of mists and clouds, a myriad passion dissipated,
6 四月飛雪滿地翔 Snowflakes in the Month of Four flying all over the ground.

7 凡事來去總是夢 The comings and goings of mortal affairs are just dreams,
8 水向東流空一塲 Like waters flowing east -- an exercise into emptiness.

1 Purple Spring is a pool where its purplish waters are frequented by fairies. It is also a name of a river in the Tang Capital of Chang An (長安, Eternal Peace). Its original name was 紫淵, the Purple Pool. However, during the Tang Dynasty, the name clashed with the personal name of Li Yuan (李淵), the founder of the Dynasty and hence the name change. Even names of gods had to be change in order to avoid such name taboos. Guan Yin 觀音, the Goddess of Mercy is an example. Her original name was 觀世音 (to see the sounds of the vulgar world) because the name of the second Tang Emperor, Li Shih Min contains the same character of 世. Here, it refers to the capital city, now known as Sian (Western Peace), the first cosmopolis in the world.

In ancient times, 楊 refers not to the poplar but to the willow (蒲柳, Salix sinopurpurea). A willow is also a personification of a pretty girl whose waistline is as slender as willow boughs and its swaying leaves to that of the girl in dance. Another interpretation is that 楊 is the last name of the imperial consort of the Tang Emperor, Hsuan Tsung. When she died, an empire collapsed around her skirts. A not so direct translation would be “Lady Yang” or “Imperial Concubine Yang” but the fun on language play is lost. The next line confirms this interpretation.

2. The Palace of Eternal Life is where Tang Hsuan Tsung and his beloved concubine, Yang Guifei made their pledges of eternal love on a certain Seventh Night – a sort of Chinese Valentine when the stars Altair and Vega meet. Originally, 宮 means the residence/shrine of a deity. Since the emperor is the Son of Heaven, his place of residence… 殿 is also translated as “palace”, but used for official duties and administrative purposes. Originally, The Rainbow Skirt is a multi-colored skirt worn by Yang Guifei in a court dance choreographed by her and music composed by the emperor.

3. Dyed silks are washed in flowing rivers to remove excess dyes and are usually done by girls. It could be just the family’s daily laundry. The most famous one is Hsi Shih, 西施 who is said to lead a happy and carefree life before she was made into a femme fatale to ruin her country’s adversarial kingdom of Wu. This line is reminiscent of Wang Wei’s 竹喧歸浣女.

5. 態, poise, state, form, mannerism, glamour etc., refers to Lady Yang’s bewitching attributes. 情 refers to the simple joys of the peasantry. With the passage of time, everything turns to dust or becomes moot.

6. Or 四月雪花, April’s flying snow, a poetic term for willow catkins. I didn’t use this because tones doesn’t sound as good because 月 and 雪 are too close to each other.

7. Most of the time, 凡事 means everything. Here it is short for 凡間事情. Not to be confused with 凡是, “everything that is in a set” or “no matter what”.

8. Rivers in China flow towards the eastwards unless hindered by local geography because their sources comes from the Himalayas which is west of China. Flowing waters denote the passage of time and in the end, the waters are lost into the ocean.

This poem says that life is a dream no matter what one’s station or situation. Death is the equalizer of all.

Friday, February 5, 2021

Hope For the Coming Lunar New Year - 2021

 

The first line was inspired by this lovely melody in this catchy version of "River Liuyang". Unfortunately, I was unable to complete the poem. The next day, I was able to -- in a sudden flash of my mind's emptiness as my brush stroked the paper with black curves and lines, forgetting the surroundings of the moment.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TV_Wcn1JQQQ

1 春降瀏陽水流靜 The waters of the Liuyang runs peacefully as spring descends,
2 九曲河畔花開盛 Flowers bloom profusely along the banks along its nine turns.
3 風和人間塵戀滿 Brimmed with worldly desires, winds caress the mortal realm in harmony,
4 萬里江山日月明 And the universe shines in favor over this thousand-league country.

1 瀏 can mean depth clarity, speedy (like the wind), calm vastness and wind blowing gently. I do not know what attributes the river was named after and so it is better to do a transliteration. 陽 means the north side of the river or the south side of the mountain. 

Originally, the last character was 清.  Later I realized that it has another meaning of "all gone" and the translation can be "The waters of Liuyang run dry as spring descends".  At the same time, in Cantonese, water is synonymous with money, wealth, etc - "prosperity will run dry as spring descends"! Very inauspicious and foreboding wording.

This reminded me of a Pu Yi story of him crying during his enthronement at the age of two.  He was comforted by his father, the Prince Regent by saying, "Don't cry, it'll will be over soon".  Also his name error, "Proclamation of Unity" doesn't help either.  After all, they were Manchus, not Han Chinese and they were foreigners in the eyes of the Han Chinese majority.

2 Information gleaned from the song’s self-answer… 瀏陽河,彎過了九道彎, 五十里的水路到湘江…

3. By extension, 和 means warmth. Here it is used as a verb. 滿 can be short for 滿足, satisfaction. A literal interpretation can be "The wind harmonizes/warms the mortal realm and earthly loves are satisfied/bountiful".

4. 江山 literally means “rivers and mountains” to mean the lands during the imperial times. When China became a republic, to avoid this connotation of the land ruled by the emperor, a new time is used, 山河 (mountains and rivers). Since I am emulating a Tang poem, so I chose to use the former term. At the same time to avoid a duplicating character. This line translated literally as, “the ten-thousand-mile mountains and rivers where the sun and moon shines brightly”.

Tuesday, February 2, 2021

No Longer Favored - 失寵

While doodling during my Chinese brush writing, line 5 came into existence.  For a few days, I could not come up with something decent.  Two days later, line 1 came into existence and was able to compose the next three lines.  Then I got stuck for the second verse.  However, line 5 came to the rescue.  The final version is the culmination of many refinements including ideas influenced by the English translation.

 

1 日落巫山月東興 Upon Mt. Wu the sun sets and the east moon rises,
2 星暗銀河風無情 Nonchalant are the winds as stars dimmed the Milky Way.
3 淚滴杯傾酒未盡 Tears a drip, cup a tilt and still not enough wine to go.
4 燭光婆娑夢豈成 Glistening under the feeble candlelight, how can dreams come by?

5 花鈿點翠玉琵琶 All dolled up in finery with blue feathered pins, this lute of jade,
6 觸弦不意舊曲聽 Unintended, lambent strings became songs of old.
7 醉笑群歡夜樂長 Giddy laughter at the pleasure amassed in a night of unending revelry,
8 撥袖騰舞伴孤迎 A grand sweep of the sleeves, dancing high, a welcome companion to the lonely.

1 Mt. Wu ("witch mountain") is a euphemism for a place where lovers trysts took place, based on a story about the King of Chu (楚懷王) having an afternoon relation with the Goddess of the Mountain.

5 花鈿 are beauty marks painted on the forehead during the Tang Dynasty. Yes, the same concept of the official look of Queen Amidala in Star Wars. They can also be made from other materials that can be pasted in the forehead or cheeks. The danglers are known as 步搖 (step swayers). All these are meant to catch the eye of the beholder. 

點翠(羽翠) are ornaments - usually for the hair - made from blue feathers of the kingfisher. The stiff ones are from the wings or tail (totaling about 28 in an adult bird) and the softer and even tinier are from the undercoat. There were several edicts during the Southern Sung Dynasty to ban this fashion statement. Not only it was an all-time-consuming process as each single strand had to be taken apart and put back together to conform to the desired shape, but the birds can only be found in the tropics, then considered as barbaric places. The practice finally died out when bluer modern materials were available at a much cheaper cost after the fall of the Manchu Dynasty. The western equivalent would be the feather craze adorning women’s hats in the 19th century.

8.  The original last character was 影 and the line translates to "A grand sweep of the sleeves, dancing high to the shadow of one".  I am still ambivalent to both imagery.  However, 迎 has a better sounding lower tone in Cantonese.  No difference in Mandarin.

Saturday, January 30, 2021