Tai Chang Ying | The Wanderer

*Here I try to use two different styles of translation, one of W.H.Auden and alike, the classic steady tones and pace, and the other of poets like Sylvia Plath, with jumpy and unfamiliar use of language that focuses less on fixed patterns brings readers fully engaged in the imagery.

*This is a Ci poem, which is composed in ancient China as lyrics to fit in a specific music tone. “Tai Chang Ying” is the title of that music tone.

 Version 1:

The last blooms fallen, a bronze chime is heard;
A roadside cock crows, an unheeded word.

My horse's tread on the dust is a light blow;
Head bent, I miss the gathering of the glow.

Sleepless the night; now before my horse's head,
Tears fall. I dream riding sweeping clouds instead.

The path is barred by a mountain's high design.
Of this homesickness, Wayfarer: "It is mine."

Version 2:

Gold bells drone in the rot-of-petals. Road-cock's cry.
My dust-puffing horse-hoof light. I, head-sunk, let the sky
Pale, unseeing. O, a night unknit from sleep!
Weep in the horse's steam! On a cloud-slight I would want to sweep
Ten-thousand leagues. Now the pass, the mountain-bone.
This homesickness—the journeying son: "I own its stone." 

Original Poem (composed in ancient Chinese or Wenyan):

太常引 游子

残花落尽闻金铃，道旁啼鸡鸣。马蹄踏尘轻，空垂首，不觉天明。

一夜不寐，马前垂泪，万里乘轻云。前路横山岭，游子曰：乡愁伶仃。