August 2024
Tom Montag
theoldmonk85@gmail.com
Author's Note: It is not so much that I have been "translating" the poetry of the Chinese masters as I have been re-imagining it. I don't speak or read Chinese, but I do read English translations of Chinese poems and can often see poems still locked inside those translations; what I have been doing is finding those poems and setting them free in a way that works as poetry for me. Here are two more of them.

After Li Yu's "Autumn Sorrow"

Without a word
I go up to my room
alone. What

the moon is
is a sickle.
The tree in

the garden
sings my sorrow.
Whatever I snap

doesn't break.
Whatever I straighten
stays tangled.

Autumn makes
such a mess
of my heart.

After Feng Yan Si's "After the Rain"

The sky is
clearing. Only
mist at evening.

Swallows skim
the weeping willows.
Up in her room

she has raised
the curtains
to look out

at twilight,
the crescent
moon. Spring

wind scatters
fallen flowers,
then a shiver

shimmers her
thin silk dress.

©2024 Tom Montag
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