The West Garden Girl
I never laughed, being bashful.
Lowering my head, I looked at the wall.
Called to, a thousand times, I never looked back.
Ezra Pound, The River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter,
translated from Li Po’s Letters from Chang-Kan
The hell with Ezra Pound you said,
he can’t speak for Li Po
or any girl married to a river merchant,
Chinese and English are just too different.
I wait under pagodas,
dapple lily ponds with my fingertips.
I tried to talk of beauty,
I wore a camellia in my hair.
You dragged your feet when you went out . . .
I argued that it was beyond language,
the unspoken is never really unsaid.
You were certain that the original poem must be
a hundred times more beautiful
because it was lost.
You went searching
scouring different Augusts
wringing the chrysanthemums.
The leaves fall early this autumn, in wind.
I begged you to translate for me
but that’s where it ended.
You said you couldn’t do Li Po justice.
So I walked unknowing
through the moon gate
under the maple trees.
The paired butterflies are already yellow with August
over the grass in the west garden.
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