孟郊诗
Poems of Meng Jiao
Index
远愁曲
Distant Sadness Blues
|
飘飖何所从 遗冢行未逢 东西不见人 哭向青青松 |
Floating, wandering, I don't know where I started. The graves you left behind, I haven't found them yet. I travel where no men are seen And do my weeping among the undying pines. |
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此地有时尽 此哀无处容 声翻太白云 泪洗蓝田峰 |
This place is at the end of time. This sorrow, it cannot be contained. My cries pass beyond the great, white clouds. My tears wash blue mountain peaks. |
|
水涉七八曲 山登千万重 愿邀玄夜月 出视白日踪 |
I ford rivers and the rivers sing. I climb mountains that go on and on forever. I want to ask the mysterious dark moon To come inspect my useless daily progress. |
-- 孟郊
废话
In titles, 诗 means "poem." 吟 means "chanted poem." Some people think 吟 means "poetry set to a given tune" but that is 辞 or 词, depending on who you ask. 曲 means "tune" or "song" and, really, it means "blues." The Chinese musical scale is pentatonic, bluesy. There are audio tracks in the 四大名捕 movies and in the 2001 笑傲江湖 which could have been written and performed by Ry Cooder. The Chinese know the blues. In Chinese, the dark of the moon is also the dark of the soul or 魄. White (白) can be another word for "useless," just as in English, blue can be another word for "sad." As has been the case before, the final two lines of Meng Jiao's poem are extraordinary.