"This, too, is a sort of ennui."
More Perihelion:
Bob Sward's Writer's Friendship Series
A quick list to poets featured in this issue:
translated from the classical Chinese by Kevin Tsai
To the Tune of Shadows of a Drunk Flower (Zuihua yin)
I.
Spare fog. Thick clouds.
I have languished through all the Hours of a day,
the sandalwood wasting away,
fragrant in the iron Beast.
(The day of the Double Nines is auspicious.)
On a pillow of jade,
only after midnight do I feel the cold
under a screen.
II.
By the East Hedges I cradle the wine goblet
after sunset, a wind of dark scent
filling my sleeves. Don't say
this does not waste away my bones.
The curtain rolled up in the west wind,
I know, my love, I have wilted
better than a daisy.
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To the Tune of a Song as if a Dream (Rumeng ling)
Last night: spare rain, sudden wind--unthinned
dreams couldn't put out the last of the wine.
We shall ask the curtain-rolling maid--
Why, the begonias are as before.
Don't you, then, know the necessity
This season: plush leaves, and flowers, thinly.
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To the Tune of the Courtesan: Spring Sensibility (Niannu jiao: chunqing)
Garden deserted, wind cross, rain a fine drizzle.
Door again I must close.
On the Fireless Day
Rude weather tries patience.
A poem with risky rhyme done,
out of head-propping bender come--
This, too, is a sort of ennui.
By the time journeygeese have all passed,
A thousand matters of the heart will not find redress.
Upstairs, how many days of spring coldness-
curtains lowered on all four walls,
I can only lean against the banister, idly.
Fragrance spent, new dream at an end.
From a wintry bed
do not allow the downhearted not to rise up.
Clear dew and morning stream, virgin colanut blossoms.
How much more want for spring revelry.
Sun high, fog dispersed--
I will see: has it turned fair in the blue today?
S-C Kevin Tsai is a doctoral student in the Department of Comparative Literature at Princeton University. His poetry has appeared in Salamander and Del Sol Review.
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