"I read it all again / I should take out my sandalwood casket / and stow it safely away"

Sent to Secretary Liu

I know you used to command
an army of veteran soldiers
marching them down new roads
as they chanted favorite ballads
forded Fenchuan River
in hard March rains
stood by Jinshui River in June
as flowers bloomed all around
but the vast sky gets locked away
behind its prison bars
and weapons of war, over time,
acquire a coat of dust
now the scholar and the monk
can sit up late, admiring midnight
and visitors can linger
drunk and flushed on the lawn
the writing brush and inkstone
almost compose on their own
as poetry books form a circle
around the thoughtful self
and a modest talent for verse
begins to come to the surface
the way the orange carp rise
when you scatter food on their pond.

By Yu Xuanji (c844-c.871), a Tang dynasty poet, Toaist nun, and possibly also courtesan. Translation by David Young & Jiann I. Lin from The Clouds Float North: The Complete Poems of Yu Xuan Ji, from the University of Virginia Library Chinese Text Initiative edition, poem #5.

(stillnotbored: I especially commend poems #14 & #17 to your attention.)

-=-

And speaking of stillnotbored, her first line contest for the month is up. Go buy, go buy!

---L.