白居易诗

Poems of Bai Juyi


Index

同李十一醉忆元九

Drunkenly Remembering Yuan Zhen with Li Jian


花时同醉破春愁
醉折花枝作酒筹
忽忆故人天际去
计程今日到梁州

Blossom time and we're drinking to forget spring cares.
I break off a sprig of flower for a drinking token.
Suddenly I remember an old friend far, far away
And that I'm supposed to travel out to Liangzhou today.

-- 白居易


废话

It is 809. Bai Juyi and his poet friend, Li Jian, are in Chang'an. Yuan Zhen has just gotten himself banished to Hubei. Not much of a poem, really. One imagines Bai Juyi with an ink bottle hanging from his neck, paper up his sleeve, and writing brush in his hair. At the least excuse, he says, "Wait, wait," hauls out his poetry equipment and spins out a poem. But this isn't exactly how he worked. He gave everyone the impression that his poetry was spontaneous. But after his death, one of the people entrusted with his papers found evidence that Bai Juyi reworked and reworked his poems. Of course, he did.

Index