Song of Myself (Tang Dynasty Edition)

More than a millennium before Walt Whitman wrote his famous Song of Myself, the great Tang poet Bai Juyi (白居易, 772 to 846) sat down and composed a much shorter poem by the same name.  This morning I had the chance to translate the Tang Dynasty version of the refrain as follows:

Song of Myself

Bai Juyi

With a white beard

And face mottled red

I’m either half drunk or

In the midst of a bender

A lifetime passes

Before you know it and

Everything turns out

To be empty anyway

Lying on a sickbed

A frail old minister

Yet still singing

Like a crazy old man

And even so I hear 

Those busybodies

Want to make me the subject 
Of their painted screens

自咏

白居易

须白面微红    醺醺半醉中
百年随手过    万事转头空
卧疾瘦居士    行歌狂老翁
仍闻好事者    将我画屏风