Chinese Poetry has really gotten to me lately - below are different renditions (translations) and the original Chinese writings themselves of one I like:
Here's my good old friend
At the Yellow Crane Terrace
For a western departure.
We're saying good-bye.
He's in a cloud of third-month blossoms.
He's off downstream to Yang-Chou.
That shadow is his lonely sail.
Now it is gone.
All the blue is empty now.
All you can see is that long, long river.
It flows to the edge of the sky.
At the Yellow Crane Terrace
For a western departure.
We're saying good-bye.
He's in a cloud of third-month blossoms.
He's off downstream to Yang-Chou.
That shadow is his lonely sail.
Now it is gone.
All the blue is empty now.
All you can see is that long, long river.
It flows to the edge of the sky.
tr. Ken Hope
and yet again:
|
Old friend west take leave yellow
crane tower
Mist flowers three month down Yangzhou Lone sail far shadow blue empty to limit Only see Yangtze River horizon flow |
My old friend's said goodbye to
the west, here at Yellow Crane Tower,
In the third month's cloud of willow blossoms, he's going down to Yangzhou. The lonely sail is a distant shadow, on the edge of a blue emptiness, All I see is the Yangtze River flow to the far horizon. |
Li Bai (705 – 762), also known as Li Po, was a
Chinese poet acclaimed from his own day to the present as a genius and romantic
figure who took traditional poetic forms to new heights
