Year by year my beauty fades. Year by year my heart breaks once more. Walking alone in a morning of deep spring, I feel too melancholy to pick plum blossoms from the branches.

Sweet remembrance of light rains from sixteen shimmering seasons past is almost enough to make a smile. Waking from reverie reveals a courtyard of crumbling marble overrun with growth.

Year by year my beauty fades. Year by year my heart breaks more and more. I spread new fragrance to make the province lovelier. Come winter... Just let me die in the snow.

 

A slight mist adorns my black carriage with diamond dew. A colorful silk scarf rests alone in my passenger seat. Solitary and wet with your fragrance.  When morning came and I rolled over... You were not there.

I was senseless, leaning against my balcony to gaze at the courtyard. Inwardly seeking to keep in my heart forever something that was never there. I dream of her hair falling around me in a dark curtain again.

But rain clouds disperse by noon and only the sun returns. Bathing the plains in white glow. Serenity turns willow trees to belly dancers in the wind... Your absence throbs deep in my heart like an ancient wooden drum.