钱凤纶·《满江红·庚午五日哭母》英译

犹记春时，

新梦破，

乳莺初啭。

曾几日，

韶光都尽，

骤惊心眼。

蒲叶欹风寒翠色，

榴花着雨垂红瓣。

最伤情，

时物总如前，

亲难见。

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悬艾虎，

飘金线，

敲画鼓，

轰雷电。

看儿童绕膝，

更教肠断。

楚些空传骚客恨，

江涛似诉曹娥怨。

愿相逢，

角黍入重渊，

逢亲面。

 

Man jiang hong:

Lament for My Mother, on the Fifth Day of the Fifth Month      

Qian Fenglun

 

I keep remembering spring

When fresh dreams shattered.

Young orioles had just begun to sing,

How many days was it?

Then glorious spring vanished completely.

Rushes bent down in the wind

Iridescent green gone cold;

Pomegranate flowers were cloaked in rain

Their red petals dragging.

What hurt most:

All things proper to the season

Were there, as ever,

And my dear mother I could not find.

I have hung artemisia and tiger,

Set ritual incense winding

Beat a painted drum until

It rumbled like thunder and lightning.

Watching the children play round my knee

Makes me even more heartbroken.

“Beware” was the message sent in vain

To Qu Yuan’s aggrieved soul;¹

River waves seem to speak the complaint

Of filial daughter Cao.²

Yet I long to be with her.

I would take offerings of meat and grain

And enter the deep abyss

Just to see my mother’s face.

 

1. An allusion to the Chuci poem “Da zhao,” reportedly a magical litany used to call back the soul of the drowned Qu Yuan.

2. The daughter of Cao Xu of the Latter Han dynasty. Her father drowned by accident while singing and dancing for the river god, Lord Wu (the spirit of Wu Zixu). She wailed on the river bank for seventeen days, finally throwing herself into the river. A tablet praising her filiality was erected, and a tomb was built by local officials in Shaoxing, Zhejiang province. The Cao daughter was commemorated in Zhejiang province during the Double Fifth festival.

 

（Maureen Robertson 译）