from LADY MIDNIGHT SONGS OF THE FOUR SEASONS
1 Spring
Tunic gathered loose and sash untied,
I put on eyebrows and go to a window.
A gauze skirt's grace is light and airy:
if it slips open, blame a spring breeze.
2
Radiant winds pour through moonrise.
Forests unfurl a brocade of blossoms.
Under a spring moon, we play at love,
trailing gauze sleeves deep in shadow.
3
Spring forests so seductive in bloom,
spring birds such grief, and spring
winds bring all that and yes, much
more breezing my gauze robes open.
4
Tempted by blossoms, a spring moon,
I wander streets and lanes, and smile.
So many I meet ache to get me naked.
Too bad they don't think they should.
5 Summer
How many nights since I put up my hair?
Long and silky, it spills over my shoulders
and sprawls beautifully across his knees.
There's nowhere its sympathies won't go.
6
Thinking of that wild thirst of love,
head over heels, nothing left undone,
I let blinds down again. Who knows
our abandon through thick and thin?
7
Up this high, a bedroom needs no walls.
It welcomes winds from every direction,
tender breezes slipping my gauze robe
wide open, teasing my lips into a smile.
Source of the text - Classical Chinese Poetry: An Anthology, translated and edited by David Hinton. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008, p.90-93.
TJB: Anti-Mirabai. The proto-courtesan poet, unironic, unspiritual, gorgeously sexualizes the seasons with wind seducing & only gauze resisting.
Saturday, November 21, 2015
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