Today Is Mid-Autumn Festival

Author: Runping Chen Here is the noisy lodging house Where I cannot compose a poem in reply to Dongpo’s Prelude to Water Melody Because whoever can hardly Bear the accumulated homesickness. I sang loudly In a melancholy. In an avulsion, my voice Sang to the top of my bent. The tacit moon, crude and rash like that, Wouldn’t realize Her radiance gave a burn to the man away home. Would you like some moon cake, my friends? No! I’d rather go outside And have a bite of the moon. Therein I might relish that taste. I wanted to throw my mind up into the starry sky And swim in the limpid moonlight. The cool breeze raised the brows of the clouds. My heart was even brighter than the Mid-autumn moon’s eye While however I opened my heart I couldn’t see my hometown A both ancient and young sadness of parting, Always classical And refreshing now and forever. Note: Prelude to Water Melody is the Ci poem written by the famous poet Su Dongpo in the Mid-Autumn Festival of 1076 (the Song Dynasty). It takes moon, full and crescent, as the symbol to describe the reunions and separations, joys and sorrows of people’s life.