Chinese poetry

forumosa.com/taiwan/viewtopic.php?t=62878
I read the topic .
Which Chinese poetry do you like?

Saw this in the MRT today. It turns out that this is just part of it. But I really like it. And my translation. Be nice. My first attempt.

IMG_20190313_164615~2

Not So by Hsiao Jer Wei

Don’t you know that the way to escape from a whirlpool is to stay still?
It’s not unlike the way you would escape from today.
It’s night again.
And I don’t know where I am. I’m obviously not at sea
But there are so many waves. I’m obviously not at yesterday, but there’s nothing that’s different. Are you asleep?
Except for tomorrow, do you know where else we can go?

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Saw another one in the MRT today. I don’t know why, but it made me laugh, even though it should be a sad one. No translation as I think it’s fairly easy to understand. I need help, though. What’s the character right before “bath soap”? Brand (that brand of bath soap)? @Dr_Milker can you help?

(Not sure what happened to my picture of poem in the above post.)

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Yep, that’s it.

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I don’t understand the so called “new poems”. I just don’t. Though I did write several myself…

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A while ago the China History Podcast had an episode on Classical Song dynasty poems about cats. I loved that episode.

By famous Song dynasty poet Lu You (陸游):

鹽裹聘狸奴,常看戲座隅。時時醉薄荷,夜夜占氍毹。鼠穴功方列,魚餐賞豈無。仍當立名字,喚作小於菟。

I mean he even wrote about catnip in a poem, and he called his cat little tiger (小於菟).

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How do you translate 從前 here l wonder.

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I don’t see any rhyme or rhythm in that poem (but maybe I’m wrong). It seems almost like someone is just talking. So with that in mind, here’s my translation:

I inadvertently bought that brand of bath soap from before
I washed myself from head to toe with that fragrance of yours
And I stood in the bathroom and cried my eyes out

Something like “used to”?

Accidentally bought the body wash you used to use, is the non-literal translation I would give. It’s what he is really trying to say.

Yeah, I think your take on this is better than mine. I translated too literally.

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Let’s see if someone care to guess what this one is about.

The title is 淪陷

若烏雲掩罩大地 是灌注新的生機
就以乾淨純白 淨化色彩雜亂的海底

豐富的幾合立體
壓碎傳統的千篇一律
不得休息的戰士
鋸出巨木隱藏的美麗天際

知足的住民辛勤拾起
白浪沖積的貪婪
甚至累到 忘記言語

讓我再一刀刀 慢慢地
殺死自己瞧不起的自己

一刀一刀 深深地 剮去自己
瞧不起自己

用虛華的文筆
嬌飾重播的議題

讓我們一起開創未來
最長遠的

淪陷

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I can only get bits and pieces. It seems very dark. I can’t pick out any main topic. Again, just bits here and there.

I was writing about Taiwan’s loss of nature, beauty, culture, and language, and how people are willingly discard what make Taiwan Taiwan, and embrace being Chinese. So yeah, it ended up being dark.

Come to think of it, it is a bit ironic that I wrote the poem in Mandarin. Then again, my Taigi sucks now, it sucked way worse back then.

I at least tried to rhyme a little bit. I don’t know if it has any rhythm, since at that time I probably couldn’t write a haiku to save my life.

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