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 Ancient Lady

By Lian Huang
(黄楝 原诗 黄楝 英译)

              When daffodils await in tranquil posture
                    Their prime time of charming bloom
                    A lady attired in pink can't imagine
                    Who's able to escape being trembled
                    By the caroling lyres and then flickered
                    Into a fit of dizziness
                    A decorated pleasure-boat remains still
                    Solidifying numerous past morns & eves
                    When your heart's undulating
                    With flooding poetic inspirations
                    Where are your poems
                    Do you still write them down
                    When you can't fall asleep being perplexed by
                    The chanting of your lovesickness
                    At the dead of the night
                    Or your hand stiffened by your indifference
                    Can hardly hold your lyric quill
                    Handled in the past with skill
                    Your only choice left is to
                    Sink into a trance facing the anthology
                    Of your past poems
                    Where are your poems I love to read them
                    And I love to be sacrificed to an eternal myth
                    By your charming caroling
                    Which drifts my dream bark to a reclusive isle
                    And paints for me your many portraits
                    Especially. those of your maiden time
                    Especially those resembling exactly the ladies I loved
                    But on a broken bridge
                    You tell me that you are awaiting
                    (your dazzling beauty & serious expression
                    suggests its resemblance to a fossilized
                    colorful butterfly)
                    A man who made you so wan and old
                    Certainly it is not me
                    'cause you are just a boy you said
                    Don't try to convince me that
                    You know exactly the feeling of a rose
                    When it comes into bloom and when it withers
                    And when it expects to bud again you said
                    Then you are as reticent
                    as the time separating you and me
                    But I still linger at the riverside
                    That cuts off the stretch of green oasis
                    Praying for your getting to know me
                    born a thousand years later
                    In your fancy world of poems & dreams