By Liu Yong
Translated by Liu Wu-chi
A cold cicada, sad and desolate,
Faces the long pavilion at twilight,
The showers having recently ceased.
Outside the city gate, drinking in the tent continues
without end.
I am about to linger awhile,
When the magnolia boat urges me to start my journey.
Holding hands, we look into each other's tearful eyes -
Without words, throats choked -
As I think of my voyage through a thousand miles
of mists and waves.
Where the evening clouds are somber and the distant skies vast.
Lovers have suffered since ancient times the
sorrows of parting.
How can I bear further my solitude in
this clear autumn season?
Where shall I be when I wake up from my drink tonight? -
Willow banks, the breeze at dawn, and the waning moon.
During this long year of separation,
All fine moments and lovely scenes will appear to me in vain.
Even if there are a thousand varieties of tender emotion,
To whom could I impart them now?
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Happy Lunar New Year! Punxsutawney Phil did not see his shadow, which hopefully means that we will get the early spring he's supposed to prognosticate (of course, he's in Pennsylvania, so maybe they'll have an early spring while Maryland, DC, and Virginia will keep slogging along). That was the first piece of good news for Groundhog Day around here; the second was that Daniel, whose admittance to the University of Maryland I noted the other day without too much hype because it was for all intents and purposes his safety school, got into Maryland's honors program, which shifts it from safety school to serious contender, considering that their robotics program is one of the top undergraduate programs in the country and it'll cost tens of thousands of dollars less than any of the private universities to which he applied. Even if Duke trounced the Terrapins tonight.
Otherwise I did some reading -- of course I'm reading A Single Man because it's Christopher Isherwood, not because of the movie OH SHUT UP (okay fine, I really wanted to know how close the book ending was to the movie ending and exactly what George said to Kenny that night but my personal canon is evidently going to be an unholy picking and choosing among bookverse and movieverse with a non-cliched happy ending dammit) -- and watched the news, Egypt and Congress both stress me out. We watched The Search For Spock since it's on my to-review list and I thought it might help with my Wrath of Khan review which is still proving ridiculously difficult for a movie I've loved more than half my life. Paul made rarebit for dinner for Imbolc and crepes for dessert since it's La Chandeleur in France, all of which was awesome. And Stephen Colbert's psychic cat fails even more than my psychic cats do, so now I am laughing too hard to type and had better go to bed. Great Falls in snow:
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