Luo Bin Wang (640-684)

In Prison the Cicadas Still Sing

Along the road running west
The cicadas sing
And from the south too
So loudly it sounds like
A visitor approaching

How long the song lasts
From their fragile black wings
Yet my white shaggy head
Detects a note of gloom

As autumn’s heavy mists
Make flight unthinkable
And the wind grows stronger
Their song will be submerged

So too by my fellow man
I have been left here forgotten
No one shows the least regard
For the songs that yet
Would fill my heart


在獄詠蟬并序

西路蟬聲唱
南冠客思侵
那堪玄鬢影
來對白頭吟
露重飛難進
風多響易沉
無人信高潔
誰為表予心
Not long after he wrote the poem, Luo was executed, although the Empress Wu, having been previously impressed by his poetic talents, did arrange for a posthumous publication of a collection of his work. Even so, this great poem provides me with a strange consolation, in the realization that there are indeed much worse fates than the obscurity in which we American poets usually toil.