Two Untitled Poems: No. 1
English translation and interpretation are being reviewed.
碧文圆顶夜深缝。
扇裁月魄羞难掩，
车走雷声语未通。
曾是寂寥金烬暗，
断无消息石榴红。
斑骓只系垂杨岸，
何处西南任好风。
English translation
Phoenix-tail perfumed gauze, how many thin folds? The blue-patterned round canopy, stitched deep in the night.
The fan, cut like the moon's disc, can scarce conceal my shame, the carriage rolled away like thunder, no word passed between us.
There was loneliness once, when the golden embers dimmed, now no news at all, and the pomegranate is red.
The piebald horse is tethered by the drooping willow bank, where is the good wind from the southwest to bear me to you?
Meaning
Figured silk woven with phoenix-tail patterns, thin and in many folds; a round-canopied curtain of green-patterned gauze I hasten to sew deep in the night. At that chance encounter there was no time to hide my face behind a round fan; yet your carriage rumbled past, and no word passed between us. Once, in loneliness I lay wakeful until the watch was spent and the candle burned out; still there was no news of you, and I waited until the pomegranate blooms turned red. Perhaps you are by the drooping willow bank, tying up your piebald horse; how can I ever wait for the southwest wind that would carry me to you?
Background
Read the background
Feng Hao reads the "willow bank" in this poem as "alluding to the surname Liu" (referring to the poet's patron Liu Zhongying), and "the southwest" as "the land of Shu," and so takes the poem to be the poet's "work of sorrowful song, written when he was about to set out for Dongchuan and went to bid farewell to Linghu, staying the night." Taking the imagery of the poem as a whole, and reading it in the light of the poet's life, his misfortunes, and his other works, it may well contain a sense of his own fate.