孟郊诗

Poems of Meng Jiao


Index

哭李观

Crying in Plum Temple


志士不得老
多为直气伤
阮公终日哭
寿命固难长

Idealists shouldn't live too long --
It's too hard on an upright spirit.
Duke Ruan would cry all day long.
Long life is indeed hard to maintain.

颜子既殂谢
孔门无辉光
文星落奇曜
宝剑摧修铓

Prestigious lineage already dead,
Kongzi's disciples emit no light.
Literary stars fall in broad daylight.
Precious swords snap off at the tip.

常作金应石
忽为宫别商
为尔吊琴瑟
断弦难再张

My usual writing is gold responding to stone.
Suddenly, the court is changed to commerce.
It's like you, mourning loss of home and harmony,
A spouse lost, hard to open up again.

偏毂不可转
只翼不可翔
清尘无吹嘘
委地难飞扬

A bent hub cannot turn.
A single wing cannot soar on high.
Your honorable self, in all modesty,
Certainly struggled to rise aloft.

此义古所重
此风今则亡
自闻丧元宾
一日八九狂

This justice has been honored from of old.
These ways today are being lost.
I just heard that they buried Yuan Bin.
Evey day, eight or nine more go mad.

沉痛此丈夫
惊呼彼穹苍
我有出俗韵
劳君疾恶肠

This gentleman is full of sorrow.
He cries out at Heaven's new face.
My poems are outside of vulgar tastes.
I urge you to hate this evil, too.

知音既已矣
微言谁能彰
旅葬无高坟
栽松不成行

You are already my understanding friend.
Profundities, who can make them clear and plain?
Fallen wanderer without a tomb.
Fallen pine, never to rise again.

哀歌动寒日
赠泪沾晨霜
神理本窅窅
今来更茫茫

Sad song arouses this chill day.
I send my tears to stain the morning's frost.
My soul's essense is original sadness.
And today brings more uncertainties.

何以荡悲怀
万事付一觞

What can wash away this broken heart?
I entrust all things to this goblet.

-- 孟郊


废话

I can't really get a handle on this poem. Who is it written to? The long-dead Duke Ruan. A close friend, living or newly dead? I halfway suspect he is writing this to his wife but I chose not to translate it that way. It didn't make things any clearer.

But things in these poems are often unclear. We are a long way, in time and mind, from these poets. In the last poem, about Kongzi and his state of Lu, I did something I hadn't done before. I dropped a line and didn't realize it until I had only seven, instead of eight, lines remaining. So I went back, about halfway, found the missing line, and then had to re-do all those couplets. Some really nice lines went away. And I had the thought, who was I to hold Meng Jiao dogmatically to the standard ordering of couplets. Maybe those lines I changed were the right lines anyway. If a poet toes the line of regulated verse, I can see that the couplets are the intention. But Meng Jiao toes no lines. He laughs and scuffs them out with his foot.

Perhaps everything I know is wrong. Perhaps translating fourteen-century-old poetry is merely a beautiful exercise in futility. But that can't quite be right. The real beauty that arises from these translations really has nothing to do with me. They come from the poets. So we must be doing something right. Perhaps, quite a bit.


Index