卜算子. 缺月挂疏桐 A Waning Moon Descended the Parasol Tree

卜算子. 缺月挂疏桐

（黄州定慧院寓居作）

原作：苏东坡 (11世纪)

英译：闵晓红（2022）

缺月挂疏桐，

漏断人初静。

谁见幽人独往来？

飘缈孤鸿影。

惊起却回头，

有恨无人省。

拣尽寒枝不肯栖，

寂寞沙洲冷。

A Waning Moon Descended the Parasol Tree

（composed at Dinghui Monastery,Huangzhou）

-       to the tune of Busuanzi

Chinese original: Su Dongpo（11th century）

English Version: Julia Min (2025)

A waning moon descended the parasol tree

near a wanderer in the dark -- just the old me.

The night smiled calmly as water clock ceased,

and a goose lingered alone in the judging mist.

It startled into the air, turned his head to check,

His regret found only a place barren and bleak.

No company, no home on cold branches to rest,

Just a stubborn sense of pride on a sandy beach.

For appreciation:

Composed in 1082 during his first career downturn after being banished from the Royal Court to this remote little town of Huangzhou (in today’s Hubei Province), located on the north bank of the Yangtze River. He arrived here in 1080 with his family and had to live in a modest house in Dinghui Monastery, still under the oversight of the town’s magistrate. Without any income from government, he had to plough the fields for food like the local farmers – a challenge that tested his tolerance and endurance, but it also shaped him into a resilient and gracious mind, as well as a great poet, calligrapher, and painter. Huangzhou indeed witnessed most of his greatest works, cherished for a thousand years onward.

The poem includes a few metaphorical touches. A waning moon suggests a decline in life. A parasol tree symbolises decent and noble qualities, as it is the only tree the king of birds, the phoenix in China, would rest upon. Here, the leafless parasol tree in winter represents a miserable time for a noble being. The goose is simply a personification of the poet himself. Chinese culture has long regarded the wild geese as symbols of loyalty, trust, and devoted love for family.  The concluding lines are seen as his courage to face challenges and resist drifting away with the social current.

The mood and tone remind me of Du Fu's "A Solitary Wild Goose" (《孤雁》), and in the western world, Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" --"Alone, alone, all, all alone, / Alone on a wide wide sea!" 

Reference:

1. Blooming Alone in Winter by Gordon Osing, Julia Min and Huang Haipeng，published by the People's Publication House Henan Province in 1991 (《寒心未肯随春态》戈登.奥赛茵，闵晓红，黄海鹏) (“A waning moon hung in the Decembered limbs of the parasol tree,/The top of the hourglass is empty, and people are deeply asleep./Who’ll see the loneliness of my coming and going/In the mists, faint as that shadow of a swan.//Startled into the air, looking back startled?/But no one cares about the disdains of such an one./Who would not take shelter in all the frozen branches,/Wants no chances but choosing rest in wintered sand.”)

2. pictures from baike.baidu.com（百度百科）

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