from "Lady Midnight Songs of the Four Seasons" by Tzu Yeh

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.