The Great Mirror of Same-Sex Love - Poetry - 10. ...to Bo Juyi...

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to Bo Juyi

Other people too have friends whom they love;

But ours was a love such as few friends have known.

You were all my sustenance; it mattered more

To see you daily than to get my morning food.

And if there was a single day when we did not meet,

I would sit listless, my mind in a tangle of gloom.

To think we are now thousands of miles apart,

Lost like clouds, each drifting on his far way!

Those clouds on high, where many winds blow,

What is their chance of ever meeting again?

And if in open heaven, the beings of the air

Are driven and thwarted, what of we below?

—Yuan Zhen,[i]

circa 816

[Levy/Walley]