"This, too, is a sort of ennui."


More Perihelion:

Bob Sward's Writer's Friendship Series

Book Reviews

Need to Know

Submissions

Mail

Issue 11: The Necessary Eye

Issue 10: Out on a Limb

Issue 9: The Missing Body

Issue 8: The Lily

Issue 7: Passages

Issue 6: No More Tears


A quick list to poets featured in this issue:

Melissa Ahart

Sommer Browning

Sarah Busse

devin wayne davis

Karen D'Amato

Yaakov Fichman

Donna Johnson

Vera Kroms

Li Bo

Li Qingzhao

Ander Monson

Christopher Mulrooney

Rahel

Todd Samuelson

Maria Terrone

Mihai Ursachi

Sophie Wadsworth

G.C. Waldrep

Martha Zweig

Li Qingzhao
translated from the classical Chinese by Kevin Tsai

To the Tune of Shadows of a Drunk Flower (Zuihua yin)

I.

Spare fog. Thick clouds.
I have languished through all the Hours of a day,
the sandalwood wasting away,
fragrant in the iron Beast.

(The day of the Double Nines is auspicious.)

On a pillow of jade,
only after midnight do I feel the cold
under a screen.

II.

By the East Hedges I cradle the wine goblet
after sunset, a wind of dark scent
filling my sleeves. Don't say
this does not waste away my bones.
The curtain rolled up in the west wind,
I know, my love, I have wilted
better than a daisy.



_______________________________________________________________

To the Tune of a Song as if a Dream (Rumeng ling)

Last night: spare rain, sudden wind--unthinned
dreams couldn't put out the last of the wine.

We shall ask the curtain-rolling maid--
Why, the begonias are as before.

Don't you, then, know the necessity
This season: plush leaves, and flowers, thinly.



_______________________________________________________________

To the Tune of the Courtesan: Spring Sensibility (Niannu jiao: chunqing)

Garden deserted, wind cross, rain a fine drizzle.
Door again I must close.
On the Fireless Day
Rude weather tries patience.

A poem with risky rhyme done,
out of head-propping bender come--
This, too, is a sort of ennui.
By the time journeygeese have all passed,
A thousand matters of the heart will not find redress.

Upstairs, how many days of spring coldness-
curtains lowered on all four walls,
I can only lean against the banister, idly.
Fragrance spent, new dream at an end.
From a wintry bed
do not allow the downhearted not to rise up.

Clear dew and morning stream, virgin colanut blossoms.
How much more want for spring revelry.
Sun high, fog dispersed--
I will see: has it turned fair in the blue today?

 



S-C Kevin Tsai is a doctoral student in the Department of Comparative Literature at Princeton University. His poetry has appeared in Salamander and Del Sol Review.

_______________________________________________________________
 

Back