Injustice - 冤

This was conceived during my jog when the line came into my mind,

路長一條人生短

In the end, the theme was changed as I tried to rhyme it.

1 花開明媚後庭苑 Bright and beautiful are flowers blooming in the backyard garden,
2 蝶舞蜂飛破春眠 Butterflies in dance and bees a buzzed, waking a sleepy spring.
3 迷迭香頭採蜜去 And upon rosemary tops, nectar are gathered,
4 路長一條生命短 The road is long and life is short.

5 結綺玉閣外莫識 Know not the outside of the Beauty Coalescing Pavilion,
6 青絲七尺醉夢完 Black threads of seven feet long, an inebriated dream has ended.
7 不罪東君怨柳蔭 Fault not the Lord of the East [for the cold] but blame the shade of willows,
8 誰能為我盡湔冤 Who would come forth to right my injustice?

1 後庭 also means the imperial hareem. The most important difference in meaning between 園 and 苑 is that 園 is used for utilitarian purposes such as 菜園 (vegetable garden) or 蘋果園 (apple orchard) but never 苑because it is used for viewing pleasure. It also has “imperial” connotation, for example, 上苑 and not 上園. It is also used as a naming of an elegant place not of a garden nature, e.g., a studio of a literati.

3 Rosemary was introduced and naturalized during the late Han Dynasty. I chose rosemary because I have plenty of rosemary growing in my garden and bees go crazy whenever they bloom in profusion. I enjoy their soothing buzzing sounds.

5 The identity can now be inferred from 結綺閣 as it was built for 張麗華. Now that her identity had been established, it is easy to see the hidden characters, 後庭花, in the first line. A poem written by Chen Shu Bao, the last emperor of the Chen Dynasty in praise of her beauty.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhang_Lihua

http://jeffinous.blogspot.com/2013/06/courtyard-flower-soul-of-chiang-li-hua.html

6 One of her lovely attributes was her black lustrous hair of seven feet long.

7 Lord of the East, the Chinese Sun God. Here it refers to Chen Shu Bao. Slender waisted women are referred to as willows.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chen_Shubao

8 Why wasn’t the ruler held accountable for the ruination of his country but put all the blame on a mere woman? She was executed. And for the man? A luxurious living till his natural end.

Friday, February 3, 2023