(779–831)
Remembering
I daydream, melancholy at the windowsill—
memories I will never tell—
our passion in the late night hours,
our tearful goodbyes at dawn.
Mountains and rivers divide us,
I’ve given up hoping for rain.
Divided, I dream of you today—
I even embrace the pain.
§
I cannot bear to put away
the bamboo sleeping-mat:
that night I brought you home,
I watched you roll it out.
§
O loveliest daughter of Hsieh,
you married a hapless scholar
and spent your life with a sewing basket,
patching his old clothes.
He thanked you
by selling your gold hairpins for wine;
he picked you herbs and berries
for your dinner
and locust leaves for the fire.
Now that they pay me handsomely,
there’s no offering I can bring
but this sacrificial mourning.
We used to joke about dying.
And now you are suddenly gone.
I gave all your clothes away
and packed your needlework—
I couldn’t bear to see them.
But I continue your kindness toward our maid,
and sometimes bring you gifts in my lonely dreams.
Everyone learns this sorrow, but none
more than those who suffer together.
Alone and lonely, I mourn us both.
Almost seventy, I know better men
who lived without a son, better poets
with dead wives who couldn’t hear them.
In the dark of your tomb,
there is nothing left to hope for—
we had no faith in meeting after death.
Yet when I open my sleepless eyes,
I see through those long nights
the grief that troubled your life.
§
I leave my empty house at dawn
and ride to my empty office.
I fill the day with busywork;
at nightfall, back to my empty house.
Moonlight seeps through the cracks.
My wick is burnt to ash.
My heart lies cold in Hsien-yang Road
under the wheels of a hearse.
§