The sun rose while I slept. I had not yet risen
When I heard an early oriole above the roof of my house.
Suddenly it was like the Royal Park at dawn,
With birds calling from the branches of the
ten-thousand-year trees.
I thought of my time as a Court Official
When I was meticulous with my pencil in the Audience
Hall.
At the height of spring, in occasional moments of
leisure,
I would look at the grass and growing things,
And at dawn and at dusk I would hear this sound.
Where do I hear it now?
In the lonely solitude of the City of Hsün Yang.
The bird's song is certainly the same,
The change is in the emotions of the man.
If I could only stop thinking that I am at the ends of
the earth,
I wonder, would it be so different from the Palace after
all?
Tr. Florence Wheelock, versified by Amy Lowell (the
once-infamous Queen Bee of the Imagist movement). Bai Juyi is an
extraordinarily interesting figure of the Tang Dynasty. The critical tradition
has widely varying views on him, not so much despite his popularity but because
of it. This poem is well-known in Arthur Waley’s translation, to which I prefer
the Wheelock / Lowell version.
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