Listen to this article鹊踏枝
[唐]无名氏
叵耐[1]灵鹊[2]多谩语[3]，
送喜何曾有凭据。
几度飞来活捉取，
锁上金笼[4]休共语[5]。
比拟[6]好心来送喜，
谁知锁我在金笼里。
欲他征夫[7]早归来，
腾身[8]却放我向青云里。
[1]叵（pǒ）耐：不可忍耐，可恨。
[2]灵鹊：相传是能够传报喜讯的鹊，又称喜鹊。
[3]谩语：欺骗的语言，这里指谎话。
[4]金笼：坚固而又精美的鸟笼。
[5]休共语：不要和他说话。
[6]比拟：打算，准备。
[7]征夫：出远门的人。这里是指关锁灵鹊的人的丈夫。
[8]腾身：跃身而起。
Tune: The Magpie on a Branch
Anonymous
How can I bear to hear the chattering magpie
Announce the happy news on which I can’t rely?
So thus I catch it alive when it flies to me again
And shut it in a cage where lonely’twill remain.
——With good intent I brought her a happy message.
Who would expect she’d shut me in a golden cage?
I wish her husband would come back soon so that I
Might be set free and take my flight to the blue sky.
This is a popular song written by an unknown poet of the Tang Dynasty (618—907) and un-earthed in one of the chapels in the Thousand Buddha Caves at Dunhuang, Gansu, in 1900. Unlike a literary lyric in which everything is seen through the eye of the persona, this song presents two distinct points of view by using a dialogue between a woman who waits in vain for the return of her husband, and a magpie who is supposed to announce the expected arrival.
