生查子·元夕 / Lyrics to the Tune "Sheng Zha Zi"

BY Ouyang Xiu
TRANSLATED BY David Lunde
Chinese

去年元夜时，花市灯如昼。月上柳梢头，人约黄昏后。 / 今年元夜时，月与灯依旧。不见去年人，泪湿春衫袖。

English Translation

On last year’s First Full Moon
lanterns lit the flower-market bright as day.
When the moon reached the willow’s top,
just past twilight, I met my love.

On this year’s First Full Moon
both moon and lanterns are the same,
but last year’s love is nowhere seen.
Tears soak my spring gown’s sleeves.

 

Biography

欧阳修 (1007－1072)，字永叔，号醉翁，又号六一居士。吉安永丰（今属江西）人，乃北宋卓越的文学家、史学家。

OUYANG XIU (1007-1072) was born in Mien-chou, Szechwan. Best known as an essayist and poet, he was also a statesman, historian, philosopher, and archaeologist. His main contributions to Chinese literature were his reform of the current prose style, and his many innovations in poetry.

DAVID LUNDE‘s poems and translations have appeared in Poetry, The Iowa Review, Triquarterly, Kansas Quarterly, Northwest Review, and others. His work has been included in forty anthologies. He is the author of eleven books of poems and translations, including Nightfishing in Great Sky River (Anamnesis Press, 1999); The Carving of Insects: Brian Zhilin’s Collected Poems (Renditions, 2006, co-translated with Mary M.Y. Fung, winner of the 2007 PEN USA Translation Award); Instead (Mayapple Press, 2007); Breaking the Willow (White Pine Press, 2008), and 300 Tang Poems (White Pine Press, 2011).

Related

 

Printed from Cerise Press: http://www.cerisepress.com

Permalink URL: https://www.cerisepress.com/04/11/lyrics-to-the-tune-sheng-zha-zi