In the fragile shimmer of your tears lies tragedy.
The bone-white curve of the moon hooks onto the past.
The night has dragged on, endless, stilled to frost;
Who is it upstairs, lost in bone-chilling despair?
Rain plays light on the ruby-red windowsill.
All my years of life on paper, blown astray by the wind.
So distant are my dreams, they become mere threads of fragrance hanging in the air.
Drifting, wind-strung, into your likeness.
(CHORUS)
The chrysanthemum shattered, the floor is strewn with tragedy; your smile has already faded to yellow.
Petals land softly, breaking hearts; my matters of the heart lie in peace.
The northern wind is frenzied, the night is not yet spent; your shadow can't be cut away.
Leaving me, alone on the lake’s surface, to become two.
The flower already nears its dusk.
Once brilliant as the sun, it's fallen, dispersed.
Fate cannot bear the world's way of withering.
Worrying that the river will prove uncrossable, my autumn heart* tears in half.
Scared you won't reach land- a lifetime spent wavering.
Hear the horses charging hysterical on someone's landscape.
The great changes of the world only whistle past my unchanging martial attire.
It grows light out, just slightly. Gently, you sigh; a night spent in this cryptic melancholy.
(REPEAT CHORUS x2)
Original song (Jay Chou): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdjbRvvJAzg
*Visual wordplay: The character used here for 'worry' is composed of the characters for 'autumn' and 'heart' when split across the middle. A pretty character with a poetic anatomy. It doesn't sound weird because you can put arbitrary seasonal markers on anything and everything in Chinese.