xíng行gōng宫

Yuan Zhen lived in the middle years of Tang, decades after Emperor Xuanzong. After the An Lushan Rebellion, Tang went from strong to weak. Emperors seldom visited their travel palaces any more, and the palaces fell into ruin. This poem is about one such forgotten palace. One view says it is the Shangyang Palace in Luoyang, with the same kind of palace maids as in Bai Juyi's poem "The White-Haired Woman of Shangyang". The exact date is not known.

元稹生活在唐朝中期，那时离唐玄宗的时代已经过去几十年。安史之乱以后，唐朝由盛转衰，皇帝很少再去各地的行宫，这些宫殿慢慢荒废了。这首诗写的就是这样一座冷落的行宫。一说这里写的是洛阳的上阳宫，和白居易的《上阳白发人》写的是同一类宫女。具体写作时间不清楚。

Yuan Zhen (779–831) was a Tang poet and Bai Juyi's closest friend. People called the two of them "Yuan and Bai". Both believed poems should show real life and be easy for ordinary people to read. Yuan Zhen wrote several poems looking back on the rise and fall of Tang. This short poem shows a whole era changing in very few words.

元稹（779—831），唐代诗人，是白居易最好的朋友，两人合称“元白”。他们都主张写诗要反映现实，让普通人也能读懂。元稹写过不少回顾唐朝兴衰的诗，这首小诗就用很少的字，写出了一个时代的变化。

The whole poem has only twenty characters, yet it is like a quiet painting. First comes an empty old palace. Then its flowers: a bright red, but no one looks at them, so the red seems lonely. A lively color makes the emptiness feel even emptier. Then come a few white-haired palace maids. They entered the palace young and spent their whole lives shut inside. Now, with nothing to do, they just sit and talk about the old days of Xuanzong. Red flowers sit beside white hair: flowers that bloom again every year, and youth that never comes back. The poem does not tell us what they say. It leaves that for us to imagine. That glorious age is now only stories told by old women.

整首诗只有二十个字，却像一幅安静的画。先是一座空荡荡的旧宫殿；再是宫里的花，红得鲜艳，可是没人看，红得那么寂寞。用热闹的红色来衬托冷清，冷清就更加明显。然后出现几个白头发的老宫女。她们年轻时进宫，一辈子关在这里，现在没事可做，只能坐着聊玄宗时的往事。红花和白发放在一起，一边是年年都开的花，一边是一去不回的青春。她们说了些什么，诗里没写，留给我们自己去想。那个繁华的时代，就这样只剩下老人嘴里的故事了。