Separated

 by Brett Rutherford

     from Li Yu, Poem 30

No one will say
why I am not allowed
to see you. Spring broke
the day our hands last touched,
and now the Spring
is half the way to Summer.

Everything I loved
in your presence
annoys me now.
Plum blossoms fall
and pile in drifts,
blow in my face
as I brush them aside.
They are no longer
beautiful to me.

A stupid swan has come
and perched itself
on my window-sill.
What does she means
to tell me? What language
does a swan speak,
anyway? And where has it been?
Can it carry a dream to me
of you and our time together?

Here we came, a pair of exiles,
and now, from one another
exiled again, and to what end?

Remember the games we played,
the contests among the poets?
Now, if one came up and asked me,
“What is the sorrow of parting like?”

I know how to answer: 

It is the one thing
both eternal and infinite.
The sorrow of parting
is like new grass in spring;
the farther you look,
the more there seems to be.