孟郊诗
Poems of Meng Jiao
Index
怨诗
A Resentful Poem
（一作古怨）
(Complaining of death.)
|
试妾与君泪 两处滴池水 看取芙蓉花 今年为谁死 |
I tried to cry for you. A couple places along the river, I managed a few tears. Mmm ... but that was because the water lilies this year look like someone dead. |
-- 孟郊
废话
About titles and prefaces. I mentioned that 吟 means "a chant" or "chanted poem." And 诗 means "poem" too. So I mostly leave these out as you already know a poem when you see one. Similarly, 作 and 一作 in preface notes mean "concerning" or "written about." But you already know that as well, without me being all redundant in that way.
In this poem's preface, Meng Jiao is playing with the 一作. His reader will see 一作 and think "concerning." And then see "古怨" and think "old complaints." But after reading the poem, or earlier if he's clever, he will catch the 作古 or "die, pass away." Meng Jiao played this same game at the end of The Wanderer "hiding" the bigram for "maternal love" by doubling up on the 春 character and ignoring the normal "grammatical" divide where in a line of ABCDE you have AB and CDE and where CD generally modifies E. He's playing with expectations within language here.
Elsewhere. I get the "Mmm ..." by taking 看取 as the bigram which more or less means "let's see..." in the sense of "mmm...." And while this poem could be about anyone he knew who had recently passed on, I think that the extreme diffidence shows extreme attachment. Which suggests that this poem is about the passing of his first wife.