Woods
by Liu Qiyu
Reaching each root in sequence
the hidden water is silver-white
advancing in the way cogs catch onto cogs
Softly this hand-crafted news
reaches the fresh leaves
The literal translation of this poem was made by Chenxin Jiang
The final translated version of the poem is by The Poetry Translation Workshop
Notes
This short poem took rather a long time to translate, largely because we opted to stay as close to the original Chinese as possible and, as you'll see if you take a look at the literal version prepared by Chenxin Jiang, the poem is written in condensed and idiosyncratic language with very singular imagery.
© Poetry Translation Centre 2004-2012
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