Red slip, white bones

Since You Left Home

The half-woven cloth has hung

          untouched on the loom

since you left home.

Missing you, I am

like the fair moon

waning, night

after night.

                     Zhang Jiuling (673-740)

The Bright Moon Night

Tonight, in your boudoir, alone,

you are watching the moon

shining over Fuzhou City,

out poor children still too young to share your longing

for me far, far away in Chang'an:

your long hair, cloud-like, wet

with the sweet night mist,

your bare, jade-smooth arms cold

in the clear moonlight.

Oh, when can we stand leaning against each

toher, against the curtain drawn aside,

letting the moonlight dry the tears

on both our faces?

                      Du Fu (712-770)

A Virtuous Wife

Knowing I am married, you gave me

a pair of lustrous pearls.

Beholden to you for your kindness,

I fastened them to my red slip.

My house is close to the Mingguang Palace,

where my husband serves as a guard.

Your intention is as lofty

as the sun and the moon, I know.

Having sworn to be with him

in life and death, I have

to return the glistening pearls to you

with tears in my eyes.

Oh, if we could have met

before I married.

                      Zhang Ju (?-830)

By the Wuding River

Pledged to wipe out the Huns,

they fought without a thought

for themselves, and died,

all of them, five thousand sable-clad warriors,

lost in the dust of North.

Alas, the white bones by the Wuding River

still come to haunt her spring dreams,

in the shape of her man.

                     Chen Tao (812-855)

To a Palace Lady

The moon moving beyond the trees

in the palace courtyard,

the egrets returning

to their nest in her lambent eyes,

under the lamp shadow,

she snatches out a jade hairpin

to save a struggling moth

by cutting through the red flame.

                    Zhang Hu (?-859)

From Treasury of Chinese Love Poems, trans. & ed. Qiu Xiaolong.