The poem is written in Classical Chinese, which was spoken over 2000 years ago, and back then would have been intelligible to a listener because the words would have sounded different. Even today, they sound different in e.g. Cantonese.
There's a close relative of Mandarin (Dungan) which is written in the Cyrillic alphabet. The spoken language is tonal, but tones aren't used in the written language because written words are polysyllabic, and if you know how to speak Dungan, you can reliably infer the tones.
There's a close relative of Mandarin (Dungan) which is written in the Cyrillic alphabet. The spoken language is tonal, but tones aren't used in the written language because written words are polysyllabic, and if you know how to speak Dungan, you can reliably infer the tones.
https://www.omniglot.com/chinese/dungan.htm