一剪梅

by Li Qingzhao

紅藕香殘玉簟秋。

輕解羅裳，

獨上蘭舟。

雲中誰寄錦書來？

雁字回時，

月滿西樓。

花自飄零水自流。

一種相思，

兩處閒愁。

此情無計可消除，

才下眉頭，

卻上心頭。

To the Tune of Yi Jian Mei:
Cutting a plum flower branch

by Li Qingzhao

Fragrant traces of red lotus

linger autumnal on my jade mat.

Gently I unfasten my silk clothes

in solitude aboard the orchid boat.

Who sends a brocaded letter through the clouds?

Messenger birds return this season, writing their flight

across a full moon over the western chamber.

By nature, petals drift in the wind, and water flows.

One kind will cling to its own:

In two places, though, with sorrows of leisure spent apart,

mourning descends my brow

only to climb aboard my heart.

translated from Chinese by Karen An-hwei Lee

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Li Qingzhao (1084 – ca. 1151) was a Chinese woman poet of the Song Dynasty. She and her husband, a government official, were fond of collecting antiques, art, and literature. Her short poems or ci are composed to the tunes of popular songs in her day, such as “Mulberry Picking,” “As If a Reverie,” and “Stream of Washed Silk.” While her poems of youth express the joys of marital love, her poems of age grieve the loss of her departed spouse, her subsequent displacements after the fall of the Northern Song Dynasty, and the trials of surviving in a war-torn nation. Li also wrote literary criticism and corresponded with academics. About fifty of her ci survive today.

Karen An-hwei Lee is the author of Phyla of Joy (Tupelo Press, 2012), Ardor (Tupelo Press, 2008) and In Medias Res (Sarabande Books, 2004), winner of the Norma Farber First Book Award. The recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Grant, she lives and teaches in southern California, where she is a novice harpist. She earned an M.F.A. from Brown University and Ph.D. in English from the University of California, Berkeley.

Circumference

Poetry in Translation

一剪梅

To the Tune of Yi Jian Mei:
Cutting a plum flower branch