Bai Juyi: Old Style Shirt

 

[updated September 2022]

 

Old Style Shirt

 

故 衫
暗 淡 绯 衫 称 老 身
半 披 半 曳 出 朱 门。
袖 中 吴 郡 新 诗 本
襟 上 杭 州 旧 酒 痕。
残 色 过 梅 看 向 尽
故 香 因 洗 嗅 犹 存。
曾 经 烂 熳 三 年 著
欲 弃 空 箱 似 少 恩。
Gu Shan

An dan fei shan chen lao shen
Ban pi ban ye chu zhu men.
Xiu zhong wu jun xin shi ben
Jin shang hang zhou jiu jiu hen.

Can se guo mei kan xiang jin
Gu xiang yin xi xiu you cun.
Ceng jing lan man san nian zhu
Yu qi kong xiang si shao en.

 

Old Style Shirt

Faded and dark red shirt matches this old body
Half-draped, half-pulled out through the red doors of officialdom.
Pocketed sleeves contain my Wu region original poems
Shirt front still has past Hangzhou party wine stains.

Remnants of plum blossoms mostly gone
After washing, these former scents and fragrances still exist.
Unaffected by these faint colors, I wrote brilliant poems these past three years
With little kindness, thrown into and then abandoned in an empty box.