寒山·《鹦鹉宅西国》英译

鹦鹉宅西国，虞罗捕得归。

美人朝夕弄，出入在庭帏。

赐以金笼贮，扃哉损羽衣。

不如鸿与鹤，飖飏入云飞。

Cliffs, Sun, and a Daylight Moon Arise

The word goes forth, and a woodsmen

Cast their nets for feathers, red, green and blue.

For what? For beauties, immured by painted screens,

To pass their hours aimlessly.

Though their cages shimmer, sunlit gold,

Their plumage fades their eyes, shaded.

No longer scan the flock of wild swans,

White and soaring into the racing clouds.

（Peter Stambler 译）

Parrots live in western lands

hunters bring them back in nets

courtesans tease them dawn to dusk

somewhere behind palace curtains

they’re given a golden cage

but locked away their plumage fades

not like wild geese and swans

flying up in the clouds

（Red Pine 译）

The parrot’s home is the Western land,

But with forester’s snare it can be caught and brought here.

The beautiful women will play with it night and day;

In and out it will go, amid their rooms’ screens.

As a gift, a gold cage to store it away;

Locked in! It will lose its feathered clothes¹.

Much better to be a goose or a crane,

Soaring and drifting up in the clouds.

1. Yü-i (“feathered clothes”) are things the immortals wear. It comes to mean the robes of a Taoist priest.

（Robert G. Henricks 译）