Chang Hu

She Sings an Old Song

A lady of the palace these twenty years,
She has lived here a thousand miles from her home -
Yet ask her for this song and, with the first few words of it,
See how she tries to hold back her tears.


***

Of One in the Forbidden City

When the moonlight, reaching a tree by the gate,
Shows her a quiet bird on its nest,
She removes her jade hairpins and sits in the shadow
And puts out a flame where a moth was flying.

- Chang Hu (translated from the Chinese by Witter Bynner)