| 英譯： |
The fifth year of the new Son of Heaven,
The cyclic year Keng-yin;
The season when the handle of the Dipper sticks into Aries,
The month when the pitch-tube is Yellow Bell.
Ten thousand forest trees stood rigid in the night:
The cold air tensed against us, solid and windless.
The glittering silver dish rose from the bottom of the sea,
Came forth and lighted the East of my thatched cottage.
On heaven's smooth and violet surface the freezing light stopped flowing,
Rays from the ice pierced and crossed the cold glimmer of moonrise.
At first it seemed that a white lotus
Had floated up from the Dragon King's palace.
But this night, the fifteenth of the eighth month,
Was not like other nights;
For now we saw a strange thing:
The rim was as though a strong man hacked off pieces with an axe,
The cassia was like a snowy peak dragged and tumbled by the wind.
The mirror refined a hundredfold
Till it shone right through to the gall
Suddenly was buried in cold ash:
The pearl of the fiery dragon
Which flew up out of its brain
Went back into the oyster's womb.
Ring and disc crumbled away as I watched,
Darkness smeared the whole sky like soot,
Rubbing out in an instant the last tracks,
And then it seemed that for thousands of ages the sky would never open.
Who would guess that a thing so magical
Could be so discomfited?
The stars came out like sprinkled sand
Disputing which could shine the brightest,
And the lamps lit by the servants
With a dusky glow like tortoiseshell
This night spat flames like ling rainbows
Shooting from the houses through holes and cracks into a thousand roads.
Yü-ch'uan-tzū's tears fell in the middle courtyard
As he walked alone,
And reflected that the sun and moon
Are the essence of Primal Yang and Primal Yin.
Because High Heaven must know how the world goes
It brought forth the sun and moon
For the unremitting toil of running across the sky
Serving as heaven's eyes and sending down the light.
If these eyes go unprotected
When the Lord of Heaven walks the Way by what shall he set his course?
I know how the school of Yin and Yang explains it:
'When the mid-month sun devours the moon the moonlight is quenched,
When the new moon covers the sun the sunlight fails.'
But the two eyes do not attack each other;
This theory does not convince me.
Better what Lao-tzū said, who taught Confucius:
'The five colours blind men's eyes.'
I fear that Heaven, just like man,
Can lose its sight by lusting after beauty.
But the time is wrong, it is not spring,
All things have passed their prime of loveliness,
The blue of the hills is the colour of broken shards,
The ice piles mountain-high on the green water,
The flowers have withered, their woman's charm all gone,
The ire are dead, their songs vanished.
In brutish winter what is there to love
For Heaven to gaze on till an eye goes blind?
There is another ancient tale I know
Of a demon frog which comes to eat the moon.
If the disc a thousand miles wide has gone down into your belly
Who was the dam that bore you, ignorant brute?
Can it be that,risen from the caves of the sea,
You have learned to climb the blue void?
I fear it was you that, in an eyelid’s blink,
Blotted out what took so long to grow.
The Yellow Emperor had two pairs of eyes,
Emperor Shun saw clear through double pupils;
When either Emperor focused his four eyes
The beams spread all the way to the four seas.
I was born too late to meet these Emperors,
Their history is doubtful, we cannot be certain,
But would they have ever suffered in patience
While insects and reptiles played tricks with their pupils?
A long sigh for the white hare which pounds the magic herb
To no other end than to guard from crimes and treasons;
The medicine is made and the mortar full but the blend has turned out wrong.
See what happens when you trust the white hare!
Think how once when Yao was Heaven,
Ten suns burned the Nine Regions.
Metals fused into streaming quicksilver,
Jade cooked to charred cinnabar,
The baking universe became a kiln.
A hundred cares of Yao's heart,
And in sudden fury let loose a mighty torrent,
Planning to drown in the flood the monsters of the nine new suns.
High up into heaven the suns ran, out of reach of the flood;
There was nothing to see in a myriad kingdoms but teeming babies growing fishes' heads.
At this time nine charioteers drove the nine suns,
Each with an ensign in his hand and flourishing token streamers.
Harnessed to the chariots were sic times nine, fifty-four young and scaly and hornless dragons,
Lightning-swift, at the nine fiery shafts.
If then you had bitten jagged edges across the wheels,
Grabbed reins and ropes, and scratched and clawed,
Crammed them rumbling down into your gullet,
Crimson scales and fiery birds stinging your mouth with burns,
Wings and back-fins upended and sideways sucked sown with a curling noise,
Propping your belly up as it bulged with lumps like mountains and hillocks,
Then you could have gorged yourself to death and been done with thieving,
Not only stuffed your hungry pit
But also freed Yao's heart of cares.
It rankles that when you should have eaten
You buried your head and had no appetite;
But now that you should not eat
With lips stretched wide and gaping jaws you eat insatiably.
You have fed your disobedience by eating the eye of Heaven.
How long before the God on High ordains your execution?
Alas, that the tiger's breeder
By the tiger is mauled,
That Heaven, which pampered the frog,
By the frog is blinded!
Know then that favour to those not our kind
Time and again brings ruin on ourselves.
Every man I know whose eyes filed him
Went looking for a sound doctor to treat them;
Heaven, I suppose, is no different from man,
And will surely miss an eye as much as we do.
Is it possible that the Lady in the Moon
Will study the art of Doctor P'ien Ch'iao,
Seize hold of a lancet rammed down that throat,
And rid Heaven of the sty above its pupil?
At first there was still a glimmer.
For a long time now it has been like a coat of lacquer.
I only fear that his work is done
And never again will he vomit it up.
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