Friday, 27 December 2013

鄭板橋 一片二片三四片 五片六片七八片 One speck, two specks, three, four specks,



Looking at the aftermath of the  recent ice storm in NE North America, my mind just shifted back to 「揚州八怪」之一,鄭板橋 的「趣怪」雪梅詩 which i translated some years ago.


  雪梅詩》 清 • 鄭板橋

        一片二片三四

        五片六片七八
        千片萬片無數
        飛入梅花總不


Xuě Méi Shī:
"FLURRIES FLYING ONTO WHITE PLUM-BLOSSOMS"
-- by Zheng Banqiao (Qing dynasty)
--  Translated by Frank C Yue

One speck, two specks, three, four specks,

Five specks, six specks, seven, eight specks,
Thousands and thousands, countless specks
Fly onto plum-blossoms and are unseen instead.

and from an earlier blog:

<波浪男兒>:
 

仿鄭板橋之“雪梅詩”,寫下一首《覓伊人》詩,每詩句皆有 “遍”字。



    《覓伊人》


      一遍二遍三四遍,

      五遍六遍七八遍。
      千遍萬遍無數遍,
      行遍冮南覓不見


<波浪男兒>:

還有一首《騙》詩,每詩句皆有 “騙” 字。

  《 騙 》

   一騙二騙三四騙,

   五騙六騙七八騙。
   千騙萬騙無數騙,
   行騙人民總不變。

1 comment:

  1. Dear Frank, Happy Lunar New Year of the Rooster! We haven't met for quite some time now. Hope you are faring well. I happened to bump into a translation of this Zheng Banqiao poem by 冷杉 in the 今天論壇 posted 2009-4-12 some time last month and thought I should also have a go. This I did, not realizing you had already done so and as early as 2013. 冷杉's and your versions of the original are slightly different. I wonder which of the two is authentic. There may be other versions including one purportedly by 乾隆 and 紀曉嵐 which features 蘆花 rather than 梅花. In any case, I have already posted mine on 1 February 2017 on my blog and would like to share it here with you and your readers:-

    Zheng Xie: On Snowflakes

    1 One, and two flakes, snowflakes three and four;
    2 Five six, sev'n eight, nine flakes, ten and more.
    3 A thousand, ten thousand, myriad flakes galore,
    4 Glide into plum-flowers, snowflakes seen no more.

    Hope you like it. Best wishes, Andrew Wong

    ReplyDelete