Poem #1

Here is a poem The River Merchant's Wife: A Letter by Li Po and translated by Ezra Pound.

While my hair was still cut straight across my forehead

I played about the front gate, pulling flowers.

You came by on bamboo stilts, playing horse,

You walked about my seat, playing with blue plums.

And we went on living in the village of Chokan:

Two small people, without dislike or suspicion.

 

At fourteen I married My Lord you.

I never laughed, being bashful.

Lowering my head, I looked at the wall.

Called to, a thousend times, I never looked back.

 

At fifteen I stopped scowling,

I desired my dust to be mingled with yours

Forever and forever and forever.

Why should I climb the look out?

 

At sixteen you departed,

You went into far Ku-to-en, by the river of swirling eddies,

And you have been gone five months.

The monkeys make sorrowful noise overhead.

 

You dragged your feet when you went out.

By the gate now, the moss is grown, the different mosses,

Too deep to clear them away!

The leaves fall early this autumn, in wind.

The paired butterflies are already yellow with August

Over the grass in the West garden;

They hurt me.  I grow older.

If you are coming down through the narrows of the river Kiang,

Please let me know beforehand,

And I will come out to meet you

                      As far as Cho-fu-Sa.

This poem tells the story of a Chinese girl who is in an arranged marriage. The relationship is at first forced and she wishes she could go back to her old life before she was married. As the years go by, she grows to love her husband and when he dies on one of his journeys she mourns his passing and longs to be with him again. The poem demonstrates different aspects of Chinese culture with arranged marriages and the vocation of river merchant. The poem also expresses how people who have grown up in the Chinese culture respond to the custom. The girl is at first against her arranged marriage but soon loves her husband and is glad for the marriage.