The seasons: Four chinese folk songs

John Bjarne Grover

Spring song (four o'clock at night)

Spring wind blows and moves spring heart,
tells the eye to look at page ninety.
Page ninety is too strange for our art:
Northern bird sings its integrity.


Summer song

Silkworm workers end the day,
long for wife with all their life -
have to let the thought astray
hold the child - a passer-by!


Autumn song

An autumn wind in window's noon,
the curtained silk like banknote sways
and lifts its face towards the clear moon,
gives sentiment in thousand rays.


Winter song

The fruit will tie the orchid's gold
but see the pine and cypress part,
reciting frost that won't turn cold
the rigid crop's indifferent heart.

Could be 'curtain silk' is better in the autumn song? It really seems to be about a net of some sort. For the 'noon', see also this poem.

Source for the chinese originals is https://www.chinese-poems.com/others.html - the four season songs in the lower part of the page. The translations are mine.

© John Bjarne Grover
On the web 30 december 2020