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