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

Angel Falls

This came about while I was jogging. I had an image of the waterfall in the animation Up. Later found out that it was Angel Falls in Venezuela…  After the first draft of the poem was completed, I found the sunset in a photo of a painting which is very similar to the setting of what I had in my mind but not the waterfall.

1 天使瀑布雲海深 The sea of clouds run deep at Angel Falls,

2 危丈三百水聲沉 And sounds of water gushing dangerously from three thousand feet.
3 夕陽辭告彩霞別 The sunset bade adieu as red colored clouds departs,
4 西斜烟飛聽龍吟 Mists rising in slanted rays and listening to the howling dragon.

1 Dropping from a height at a bit over 3,000 ft, most of the water are turned into mists before hitting rock bottom. This mists would cover a wide area and looked like a sea of clouds.

2 One 丈 is about 10 feet.

3 The night is coming and soon the view will be hidden by night.

4 The sound of the waterfall will never stop.

Tuesday, January 31, 2023

No Place For Yearning

I thought it had been raining last night but did think much of it. This morning when I went for my morning jog, the street was wet. So, I wasn’t wrong.

1 道上晨早昨夜雨 On the streets of early morning was last night’s rain,
2 窗前烏雲暗千樹 Beyond the window are black clouds darkening the forest.
3 緣何別寢暖舊夢 But why should my bed be fare-thee-well and old dreams not be warmed?
4 霎時萬鳥靜無處 When suddenly with multitudinous birds and nary a place of quietude.

2 Literally, “a thousand trees”

4 Literally, “ten thousand” and the sky had brightened enough to rouse the birds from their nests.

Monday, January 30, 2023

Looking Forward To Coming Spring

The sun was shining but the wind was cold. Looking forward to spring…

1 梅紅富貴開 Plum blossoms red draping in magnificent abundance,
2 喜鵲報春來 And joyous magpies announcing the coming of spring.
3 東君微一笑 The Lord of the East Wind in gentle smiles,
4 和合更喝彩 Peace and Harmony will cheer even more.

1 富貴 literally means the rich and the nobility in which they have plenty in everything of luxury. Hence flowers blooming in profusion is a good omen - 花開富貴. Even for a bad omen, like the shattering of a plate, glass etc. into many pieces, this would be uttered as in Western superstition of saying “touch wood”.

2 Magpies are one of the first birds to be seen when spring is near. Hence a joyous occasion for winter to end.

3. The Chinese sun god.

4. This refers to the Twin Immortals of Peace and Harmony, 和合二仙. Most probably the depiction of寒山 and 拾得.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/He-He_Er_Xian

Sunday, January 29, 2023

無題 - Untitled

While jogging…

1 巖邊青松長險居 By the cliffs, the green pine lives perilously in permanence,
2 頂上白鶴棲無慮 And on the tops, white cranes made their homes without worry.
3 軒昂婷立觀世音 Dignified and in grace, they stood surveying the sounds of the mundane world,
4 風聲微動飛天去 When comes a breeze and mild movements, they fly away into the heavens.

3 觀世音 is also the name of the Goddess of Mercy, better known as Bodhisattva Guanyin. Her name was shortened because she shared the same character as the personal name of the 2nd T’ang Dynasty emperor, Li Shih Ming so as to avoid tabu naming.

4 Another pun used, 飛天 is the Chinese word for Apsara.

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

Friday, January 27, 2023

From Inspiration To Paper

Woke up this morning feeling tired and tried going back for another snooze but couldn’t. For an hour, my mind was doing gymnastics as these lines kept on churning and messing up my daily routine…

秉筆半空字下難
紙上雪白看心煩

Upon trying to doodle the lines with the brush, changes started…

秉筆半空欲墜難
雪白無字看心煩

My mind was blank. Glorious rays of sunshine were beaming down outside and I started reordering the lines,

窗外陽光…
…
…
秉筆欲墜半空難

Again, I was stuck as I lacked the theme… Thinking back to my previous poem, one of the indirect reference to celestial immortals are forbidden to descend to the earth for having any liaison without permission…

陽光不如仙子…

However, this form does not work…

陽光無束易下凡

With this working, the idea of words flowed easily…

1 東君無慮私下凡, Nary a worry for sunlight to steal down to the mortal realm,
2 催盡喜鵲快歸還. Urging magpies to return quickly.
3 雪白紙上待黑發, Snow white is the paper waiting for the black to spread,
4 秉筆半空欲墜難. Brush held in midair and its descent is difficult.

1 The Chinese sun god.
2 Magpies are one of the early signs for spring.
3 Black refers to the soot-like ink used to write Chinese, still used in calligraphy.
4 Before the brush, the ancient Chinese used a bamboo stick as writing implement.

Friday, January 27, 2023

Jogging On Chinese New Year

The sunlight was weak and the wind is cold. It was the first day of the Year of the Rabbit and I had to do my daily jog…

1 新春弱日寒冬象 Sunlight is weak and early spring still in the form of winter,
2 雲冉青山白綿羊 Clouds slowing wending their way over green mountains in fleecy white.
3 一驟海風刺骨撲 A sudden of gust of bone piercing ocean wind leapt at me.
4 心中南洋直奔向 And my heart immediately fled towards the direction of the South Seas.

1 Today is the first day of Chinese New Year aka “Spring Festival”.

2 It can also be interpreted as flocks of sheep dotting on the green mountains under slow moving clouds.

4 南洋 is a term to denote mainly the South East Asian regions of Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia where there are large concentrations of Chinese diaspora.

Sunday, January 22, 2023