Song for the Zither: Autumn Winds
By Li Bai
The autumn winds are chaste and wistful,
the autumn moon shines softly with light.
Wherever the winds travel,
fallen leaves gather and scatter,
startling the crows who perch on parched trees,
who tremble in the sullen wake of the passing winds.
When will we meet again?
When can we truly express our love?
It is impossible to tell.
This ennui, framed by the autumn's night,
has dammed the roiling emotions --
so, stifled of the ability to speak,
I lapse into an unwilling silence.
If you enter the gates of my longing,
you will understand the depth of my pain,
my twin states of suffering.
Yearning has two faces -- long, and short:
If prolonged, yearning resurrects lasting memories
that could never be cleaved apart.
If reduced, yearning sears and burns each fleeting instant
and has no end in sight.
If I had known from the start
that my feelings for you
would be as excruciating and as entangling
as this chilly autumn breeze,
I'd rather that we never did acquaint at all --
it would have been better if we never did at all.
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Sometimes, in order to polish my Chinese, I'd translate poems for fun.
This is a lyric poem ('ci2') written by Li Bai sometimes in the Song Dynasty.