少小离家老大回，
乡音无改鬓毛衰。
儿童相见不相识，
笑问客从何处来。
I can make it rhyme, but should I? Is wanting to do so colonialist or appropriative?
It clearly has a rhythm in its native form, 7 x 4, so I wouldn't be forcing in periodicity where none existed. Surely it's more revisionist to strip out the meter.
And I just want to make it more accessible! (Yeah, but the road to hell is paved with good intentions.)
More commentary later, but first, the result:
Leaving home young, I now return aged,
My accent remains, my temples have grayed.
Village kids don't recall me, and greet me with glee,
"Where do you come from?" they ask merrily.
It's comforting to know that rhyming re-interpretation puts me in good company. The former President of HK's LegCo, no less, goes to great efforts to document his iterative approach.
I'd like to say that my relatively slapdash attempt is intentionally so; I'm getting a machine to do the grunt work.
Leaving me more time to provide illustrations (also with a machine - Stable Diffusion - doing the heavy lifting.)
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