from Two Ballads of Ch’ang-kan
I
My hair barely covered my forehead then.
My play was plucking flowers by the gate.
You would come on your bamboo horse,
riding circles round my bench, and pitching green plums.
Growing up together here, in Ch’ang-kan:
two little ones; no thought of what would come.
At fourteen I became your wife,
blushing and timid, unable to smile,
bowing my head, face to dark wall.
You called a thousand times, without one answer.
At fifteen I made up my face,
and swore that our dust and ashes should be one,
to keep faith like “the Man at the Pillar.”
How could I have known I’d climb the Watch Tower?
For when I was sixteen you journeyed far,
to Chu-t’ang Gorge, by Yan-yu Rocks.
In the fifth month, there is no way through.
There the apes call, mournful, to the Heavens.
By the gate, the footprints that you left:
each one grows green with moss,
so deep I cannot sweep them.
The falling leaves say the Autumn’s wind is early,
October’s butterflies already come,
in pairs to fly above the western garden’s grass.
Wounding the heart of the wife who waits,
Sitting in sadness, bright face growing old.
Sooner or later you’ll come down from San-pa.
Send me a letter, let me know.
I’ll come out to welcome you, no matter how far,
all the way to Long Wind Sands.
—Li Po (translated by J. P. Seaton)
—found in Bright Moon, White Clouds: Selected Poems of Li Po (2012; this poem ca. 750)