孟郊诗
Poems of Meng Jiao
Index
冬日
Winter
|
老人行人事 百一不及周 冻马四蹄吃 陟卓难自收 |
An old man goes on with life as usual. Of a hundred things, he barely gets one right. He eats the four hooves of a frozen horse. Doing better than this would be hard for him. |
|
短景仄飞过 午光不上头 少壮日与辉 衰老日与愁 |
Brief moments awkwardly fly by. But still, it isn't even noon. When young and strong, days are glorious. Old and weak, they're merely anxious. |
|
日愁疑在日 岁箭迸如雠 万事有何味 一生虚自囚 |
A day's anxieties make you distrust the day And flying years become your enemy. All things lose their savour And a whole life becomes an empty prison. |
|
不知文字利 到死空遨游 |
I wonder if writing even matters In this empty journey down to death. |
-- 孟郊
废话
This is Meng Jiao being Bai Juyi's dark twin again. In Bai Juyi's "The Foxglove Gatherer," the poet sympathizes with an old man's struggle to feed his grandchildren. Here, Meng Jiao deeply empathizes with an old man's struggle to go on living. Where Bai Juyi maintains a distance by feeling ashamed of his own good fortune, Meng Jiao is at one with the old man and his struggle. It is, after all, everyone's struggle.