On The Highest Tower
In White Emperor Castle
on
the walls the way’s sharp, narrow: in waning sun, pennants
signal mourning—
one
stands alone on the misty tower’s soaring heights—
in
the gorge cleft: cloud and fog where dragon and tiger sleep—
the
sun-drenched Yangzi enfolds roaming turtles and alligators
western
limbs of the Fusang Tree meet this severed stone;
eastern
shadow of the Ruo River accompanies its long current
what
son of man leans on his gooesfoot cane sighing for this
generation?
he
weeps blood into thin air, turns his white head away
translation © Jack Hayes 2018
based on Du Fu: 白帝城最高樓
báidìchéng
zuì gāo lóu
Note: This is a much more conventional reading of a poem
Sheila Graham-Smith & I worked on (& posted) earlier.
Image links to its
source on Wiki Commons:
Temple of the White
Emperor, Baidicheng: photo by Wiki user Tomasz Dunn,
[https://www.flickr.com/people/63651050@N00] who makes it available under the
Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.
[https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en]
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