Poem by Ma Zhiyuan

[snowynight]

天净沙·秋思
马致远

枯藤老树昏鸦，
小桥流水人家，
古道西风瘦马，
夕阳西下，
断肠人在天涯

Translation by Shi Wen-lin:

Tune to “Sand and Sky”
——Autumn Thoughts
By Ma Zhiyuan

Dry vine, old tree, crows at dusk,
Low bridge, stream running, cottages,
Ancient road, west wind, lean nag,
The sun westering,
And one with breaking heart at the sky’s edge

Comments

[jjhunter]

This poem feels very much like an impressionist painting to me -- just enough detail re: the setting to set the tone for the final line. Is "the sun westering" a literal translation? It's a very lyrical fragment, and 'westering' is a gerundive I intend to tuck away for my own eventual use.

Thank you for sharing it. :o)

[lnhammer]

That caught my eye as well. Going at this from having only Japanese, which means just the characters without any grammar or idiomatic meanings, I get [sunset] [west] [down], where [sunset] is a compound that more literally refers to the start of evening. What verbal ideas to understand from that, I have no clue.

---L.

[snowynight]

More literally, (more boringly), the verse can be translated as the sun's going west, but the moment that the sun's going west (but not quite evening) has a load of symbolic meaning in Chinese poem so I think here the more literary westering is a good choice.