孟郊诗
Poems of Meng Jiao
Index
答卢虔故园见寄
After Seeing Lu Qian's Hometown
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访旧无一人 独归清雒春 花闻哭声死 水见别容新 |
Visiting an old place abandoned by men. Returning alone in a clear Luo River spring. Among the flowers, the weeping of the dead. In the river, all new things borne away. |
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乱后故乡宅 多为行路尘 因悲楚左右 谤玉不知珉 |
After the destruction of your old home, Many have walked this dusty road. Influenced by the sadness of Chu, They slander your work, not knowing its value. |
-- 孟郊
废话
Two remarks:
1. I can't identify Lu Qian of the Warring States. So I have no idea what treasure of his the Tang were slandering.
2. I have finally made sense of the character 雒. Dictionaries unhelpfully define this as "a white-maned black horse" presumably referring to some famous horse. That's as may be. One dictionary defines it also as "fearful." I think we can drop that possibility. This seems to be one of those characters which was used by different scribes in different places for different things. (There are many such characters.) This one is pronounced "luo". So the horse was probably named Luo. This character is also a literary alternative for referring to Luoyang, its river (the Luo), and environs. Because "net" is also pronounced "luo", this character has been used as a verb for "holding something in place with a net." Thanks to our legendary horse, it also gets used as a verb for "branding a horse." And because the right-hand side of the character means "short-tailed bird", this character has been used for "owlet."
So, I should probably go back and change Meng Jiao's uses of this character to the Luoyang usage. But I won't. Translating Chinese is more or less the constant revelation of past mistakes. Fixing them would take time away from learning what else you did wrong. And sometimes you are even wrong about being wrong. You can see where this is leading. The best plan is to learn as you go, do the best you can, and call it good.