孟郊诗

Poems of Meng Jiao


Index

闻砧

The Fulling Block


杜鹃声不哀
断猿啼不切
月下谁家砧
一声肠一绝

Cuckoo's cries don't make me sad.
Wails of lonely apes don't move me.
Beneath the moon, a fuller pounds
And each blow breaks my heart.

杵声不为客
客闻发自白
杵声不为衣
欲令游子归

The pestle's sound, I long have known.
It makes me want to explain myself.
The pounding doesn't call cloth to mind.
It's like a command to call me home.

-- 孟郊


废话

A fulling block is used to make cloth denser and stronger. That someone is pounding it at night suggests that it is summer when pounding in the heat would be exhausting. So somewhere to the south. Which makes this poem out of place in the scrolls. Because in the scrolls we are busy taking and failing imperial exams. And that's all we know.


Index