孟郊诗
Poems of Meng Jiao
Index
将见故人
Going to See Old Friends
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故人季夏中 及此百馀日 无日不相思 明镜改形色 |
Old friends, last month of summer, Been here three months already myself. No day passed I didn't miss them, Watching my reflection change in the water. |
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宁知仲冬时 忽有相逢期 振衣起踯躅 赪鲤跃天池 |
Who knew, mid-winter, Suddenly, a gathering time? Brush myself off, stand around, while Red carp leap from the lake. |
-- 孟郊
废话
I try not to do pigeon-English translations that sound like American Indians on 1960's TV shows. The Tang Chinese (and the Indians) deserve better. Even five characters in Chinese make for a full sentence, if not three or four. I try to keep it to one. But sometimes the poem is like this one, more of a collage than a description. And I think this would be true to the Tang listener as well. So I present it as it comes to me.