江月孤舟 · Lone Boat on the River Moon

A lone traveler has been drifting on a small boat for days. Tonight, at the deep hour of midnight, the moon rises clear over dark reeds. Its reflection shakes in the current below — a luminous disc trembling with every ripple. On the far bank a single village lamp still burns, impossibly distant. There is no letter, no messenger, no road home. Only the erhu knows what to do with this kind of silence.

江月孤舟 takes the moonlit-longing theme away from terraces and windows and out onto open water. The homesickness here is not the ache of waiting — it is the ache of drifting. The boat moves east the way time moves: without asking, without stopping. Erhu (二胡) leads throughout, its two silk strings carrying the interior grief that words in five-character verse can only begin to approach. Guqin provides a silk counterpoint; a sparse frame drum marks the river's slow pulse; a distant xiao (簫) enters only on the bridge, evoking the echo of reeds across the water.

[引子]
篷底水聲寒，
蘆花兩岸殘。
一燈村火遠，
月落釣絲閒。

[主歌一]
中流無篙倚，
夜深舟自搖。
天河橫碧漢，
影入黑波搖。
霜重蓬窗冷，
魚燈隔葦燒。

[副歌]
此月照故園，故園月幾輪？
千里同一輪，歸夢難成真。
江水不問人，東去復東去。
只有二胡聲，替我訴離分。

[主歌二]
雁過無消息，
風來帶葦聲。
白露滴篷角，
殘星掛曉更。
故鄉燈火處，
兒女已成行。

[副歌]
此月照故園，故園月幾輪？
千里同一輪，歸夢難成真。
江水不問人，東去復東去。
只有二胡聲，替我訴離分。

[尾聲]
舟輕隨水去，
月滿無人知。
一葉浮天地，
鄉心寄此時。

Theme: Moonlit longing (Round 3) · 2026-05-29 Lead instrument: Erhu (二胡) · Literary Chinese (文言) · Pentatonic · ~2 min 47 sec