Li Qingzhao

Li Qingzhao (Li Ch’ing-chao) was the daughter of an influential family and married into another. She and her husband were cultured types, avid collectors of bronzes, books, and inscriptions who passed their evenings playing games in their library where they guessed which page from a book contained a quoted line. When Li’s husband traveled for work, she would get drunk and write poems about how much she missed him. After war broke out, they carted away as much of their collection as they could as they fled south. When her husband died, she would get drunk and write poems about how much she missed him. What remained of her collection was stolen or abandoned over the years as Li moved with the court. She eventually remarried but was briefly imprisoned after accusing her second husband of fraud and dissolving the marriage.

I remember in Hsi T’ing
All the many times
We got lost in the sunset,
Happy with wine,
And could not find our way back.
When the evening came,
Exhausted with pleasure,
We turned our boat.
By mistake we found ourselves even deeper
In the clusters of lotus blossoms,
And startled the gulls and egrets
From the sand bars.
They crowded into the air
And hastily flapped away
To the opposite shore.

Wind comes on the lake.
The waves spread far and wide.
Already Autumn is ending.
The red lotus blossoms are few,
Their fragrance is sparse.
All men love the reflection in the water
Of the colored mountains
And never stop talking of their beauty.
The lotus pods are ripe.
The lotus leaves have turned old.
Duckweed and rushes are soaked with crystal dew.
Gulls and egrets along the bank
Have their heads tucked beneath their wings,
Or turn their heads away,
As if they too regret
That you must go back so soon.

Tranquil and serene, the night
Seems to last forever.
Yet we are seldom happy.
We all dream of Ch’ang An
And long to take the road back to the capital,
And see this year again the beauty of Spring, come with
Moonlight and shadow on the new flowers.
Although the food is simple, as are the cups,
The wine is good, the plums sour.
That is enough to satisfy us.
We drink and deck our hair with flowers
But do not laugh,
For we and the Spring grow old.

Fifteen years ago, beneath moonlight and flowers,
I walked with you
We composed flower-viewing poems together.
Tonight the moonlight and flowers are just the same
But how can I ever hold in my arms the same love.