chūn春yuàn怨

This is a palace-lament poem. Such poems are about women in the palace who have lost, or never won, the emperor's love, and about their loneliness and grief. The poem does not say who the woman is, and the year it was written is not known. Through the dusk, the empty courtyard and the fallen pear blossoms, the poet shows her shut away alone, with no one to care for her.

这是一首宫怨诗。宫怨诗写的是住在宫里、得不到皇帝宠爱的女子的孤单和哀怨。诗里没有说这个女子是谁，具体写作年份也不清楚。诗人借黄昏、空院和满地梨花，写出她一个人关在屋里、无人问候的心情。

Liu Fangping was a Tang poet from Luoyang. His exact dates are not known; he lived around the time of Emperor Xuanzong. He spent most of his life as a recluse and never held office, and he was both a poet and a painter. Not many of his poems survive. His quatrains are his best work: with a few small things he could show delicate feelings, as this poem does.

刘方平，唐代诗人，洛阳人，生卒年不详，大约生活在唐玄宗前后。他一生大多隐居，没有做过官，会写诗，也会画画。他的诗流传下来的不多，以绝句写得最好，常常用几个小小的景物写出细腻的感情，这首诗就是一个例子。

From start to finish the poem has no speech. It is just one picture after another. The sun goes down and the sky grows dark: time is slipping away. However splendid the house, no one comes to see her, and she must wipe her own tears. The courtyard is empty and spring is leaving, as if her youth were slipping away too. The last line is the most beautiful and the saddest. White pear blossoms cover the ground, but the gate is shut. No one comes, and she does not want to go out. No one sees the flowers bloom or fall, and she too has been forgotten here. As you read, picture a quiet, darkening dusk and a ground covered with white petals.

这首诗从头到尾没有写一句话，只是一个画面接一个画面。太阳落了，天黑了，这是时间在流走。屋子再华美，也没有人来看她，她的眼泪只能自己擦。院子空空的，春天要走了，她的青春好像也一样在溜走。最后一句最美也最伤心：洁白的梨花落满一地，门却关着，没有人来，她也不想出去。花开花落都没人看，人也一样被忘在了这里。读的时候，可以想象一个安静、发暗的黄昏，和满地白白的花瓣。