Poetry Forum

To the memory of the T'ang poet Li Bai
who drowned in the year 762 AD,
drunk, and with his spirit all over the heavens,
diving to embrace the harvest moon
shimmering on dark still waters.

Bright moonlight falling on my bed
gleams like frost upon the ground:

Lifting my head I remember
how silly, how human you were,
immortal now, made part of the splendid folly
with which you died: the beauty
lingers, I smile and salute you,
raising, again, the parting glass
to the true-man of Shi-yo,
to the undimmed voice.

China, so delicate, unreal, as distant
as the rattle of teacups in the soft
sunlight of vicarage gardens,
enshrouded now in fragile sepia
with other dull unbending times,
and a thousand times a thousand
passions, sweaty battles and couplings:
the strain, the hopes, the failure.

But you, your China chose you well,
and armed with its lean and lucid tongue,
you set off for distant cloudcut mountains,
with wine, and with close companions,
over roads that were twisted like sheep's guts,
until the red-faced foreman of Kan-chu
came staggering out to greet you,
there by the river bridge.

Then the path led on to the willow temple,
to a garden with food on jewelled tables,
to the sound of flutes and drums;
young crimsoned girls with tinkling earrings
were dancing, and you danced with them, waving your sleeves,
by murmuring waters as clear as blue jade,
rippling . . . softly rippling.

And all these things, you said, must come to an end:
all lovely things must come to an end
and never again be met with.

Lifting my head I see the bright moon
I lower it, thinking, thinking . . .

-----------------------------------------------------

The first two and last two lines are my own loose translation of a famous poem by Li Bai -- aka Li Po, Li Tai-po, or 'Rihaku' in Japanese -- known to every homesick Chinese in the world. The original can be viewed at this site, with both English and French translations: http://afpc.asso.fr/wengu/wg/wengu.php?l=Tangshi&no=233

The title is a nod of acknowledgment to a dog-eared anthology of world poetry edited by Ezra Pound (now sadly out of print) in which I first came into amazed and delighted contact with T'ang era poetry. See also a translation from Tu Fu on the PG forum http://poetsgraves.co.uk/forum/viewtopi ... =27&t=4811

I picked up a paperback in Smiths back in 1973 - Li Po and Tu Fu. The first poem in the collection is Quiet Night Thoughts, and I'm looking at the book right now - held together by timebrowned cellotape.

I like the way you've presented this, you've not gone over-Oriental on it (nicely diluted by 'parting glass' and the very English 'vicarage garden'), yet managed to hold the ghost.

I think you've maybe dragged out the ending too much - just dive in and catch the moon.

'by murmuring waters as clear as blue jade,

All this, you said, must come to an end.

Lifting my head I see the bright moon
I lower it, thinking, thinking . . '

I have a few translations of this poem, my favourite ending is -

Lifting my head I see the bright moon,
lowering my head I dream that I'm home.

Excellent

Barrie.

They ask me where's the sense
on jasper mountains.
I laugh and don't reply,
in heart's own quiet:

peach petals float their streams
away in secret
to other skies and earths
than those of mortals. - This just about sums him up.

I very much liked that you avoided the kind of "Orientalism" that often creeps into poems written about China (and Japan) by Westerners. You pretty much captured Pound's mindset—what of it I could gather from his own brief essays—when Pound sought to translated his own versions of Li Po and Tu Fu and other Chinese poets.

In the last line, "...thinking, thinking..." seemed to drift a little too far into abstraction. Maybe "dreaming, yearning" would move it towards something more specific than just "thinking."

I very much liked that fragility captured in

China, so delicate, unreal, as distant
as the rattle of teacups in the soft
sunlight of vicarage gardens

Though perhaps "unreal" is not necessary as everything else suggests the ethereality quite well.

Nicely done.

peach petals float their streams
away in secret
to other skies and earths
than those of mortals.

Mountains cover the white sun,
oceans drain the golden river;
you widen your view three hundred miles
going up one flight of stairs.
- Wang Zhihuan

I've been working on this poem ... off and on, mostly off .. for about fifteen years. I could never never get it exactly right, particularly the last bit -- but this is as close as I'll ever come. I'll come back to it again and again, but this is it, I'm basically finished. Time to move on. I have a yearning affinity and understanding (I think) of this peculiar tipsy talented gent which cuts across all time and distance: EP's translations were pretty cool (the door swings open, we step inside) but the Chinese is even better because it is so ... stark, direct, in your face! Bang, slap,that's it! No fancy language. There's a bit of fancy language in the poem I've written, not too much, because I was trying to establish a setting, an atmosphere, different from the contemporary norm for non-Oriental readers. Your comment that the ending is dragged out rather puzzles me, because for me the conclusion is the whole heart of the poem ... a less than sober recall of all those lovely things (food and companionship, booze, young elegant pretty girls) that Li Bai then, and you and me now, both love and enjoy and will sorely miss beyond the grave ... if we're in any state to miss or recall anything!

Anyway, thanks to you and Gene for the comments. This poem is a little too close to the heart, or the head, because it's been banging around between both for the last umpteen years ... and I could never get it just right. Always tweaking. Well, this is it ... I'm tossing it out of the nest at last. Go on, fly, fly ye aging bastard!

Appreciate your effort translating classical Chinese poems. A very nice tribute. I also enjoy the ink painting. There are so many translated versions that sometimes make me wonder how the translators did their translations - translate directly from the Chinese text, or translate with the help of the dictionary, or even translate out of a translated version.

Lifting my head I see the bright moon
I lower it, thinking, thinking

'thinking of my home' is more close to the original.

oceans drain the golden river;

'golden river' should be the Yellow River - the second longest river in China.

Brendan,

A haunting poem.
Like Gene, I especially liked the China/teacups image. I was wondering whether you could show that as
Cathay/china, or is that OTT?

I must admit, though, that I stumbled over this:
And all these things, you said, must come to an end:
all lovely things must come to an end
and never again be met with.

If only George Harrison hadn't turned "All Things Must Pass" into a cliche..
And what did Churchill say about ending sentences with prepositions?
"and never re-encountered" ? (Just a suggestion)

Nice work
Geoff

The only time I feel alright is when I'm into drinking
It helps to ease the pain of it and it levels out my thinking
- from FROM CLARE TO HERE by Ralph McTell

Ded

It’s a pleasure to read something by you in a gentler, more reverential voice. Reading your piece, I feel compelled to expand my poetic horizons and delve into the poetry of Li Bai.


og

ded,

Well, as this is a translation of an obviously lovely poem, it is difficult to criticize both for content and for word order...translation is such a sticky and, as og mentioned, reverent practice. Kudos for even trying. The only thing I suppose I'll hazard is to recommend you try tinkering with the finer points, your indefinite articles, and your prepositions, most chiefly. It can lend an ownership and your personality to the piece. A small for instance, "as the rattle of teacups in the soft sunlight of vicarage gardens," is a nice phrase, but we move it about and take out an "of" or two it can sound even crisper: "as the teacups rattle in the softly sunlit vicarage gardens."

Not a real criticism, I suppose, but as translation is by nature recursive, it might be fun to fuck around with it some more.

Nicely done, either way.

Cheers,

Keith

Absalon ... hi, long time no hear. Just a brief word to correct a misconception, if I may -- only the first two and last two lines are an actual translation from Li Bai; all the rest is pretty much my own stuff with a touch of Ezra Poundish influence from his other Chinese translations. I hope this doesn't disqualify the piece from being "a lovely poem", if perhaps not quite so "obviously" .... !

ded in addition to those lines quoted of the teacups this my favorite:

But you, your China chose you well,
and armed with its lean and lucid tongue,
you set off for distant cloudcut mountains,
with wine, and with close companions,
over roads that were twisted like sheep's guts,
until the red-faced foreman of Kan-chu
came staggering out to greet you,
there by the river bridge.

Roads twisted like sheep's guts. The language and imagery here is simply stunning. I won't offer crit since you say the poem is done. I'll just add my admiration to the heap and tell you that this took me to a place of longing and discovery.

e