Read The Anchor Book of Chinese Poetry Online
Authors: Tony Barnstone
The Anchor Book of Chinese Poetry (15 page)
A cold current in early winter,
a north wind of bitter shivers.
This grief lengthens night.
I look up, see a million stars arrayed,
a full moon on the fifteenth
but on the twentieth the moon-rabbit's part gone.
From a far land, traveler, you came
and handed me a letter
with a first part about missing me,
a second part mourning long separation.
I put the letter in my sleeve
three years ago. The characters still speak.
My whole heart holds on with a passion.
I fear that you won't understand.
A traveler came from afar
and brought me a piece of silk.
Parted by three thousand miles,
my man's heart is unchanging.
I used the pattern of two mandarin ducks,
and cut the silk into a quilt for two,
stuffed it with my missing him
and tied all the knots hard and fast.
When you throw glue into paint,
who can separate the two?
Pure and white bright moon,
lighting my silk bed curtains.
I feel such grief I cannot sleep,
just slip on a robe and rise.
Traveling may be a joy,
but early return is better.
I step out of the door and pace
with no one to listen to my sorrow.
Head lifted to sky, I return to my chamber,
clothes wet with tears.
1
The wife of Jiliang was said to have played her lute before drowning herself in sorrow after her husband's death in battle.
1
“The South Basket and North Dipper can't be used” alludes to Song 203 in the
Book of Songs
, and the sense of the source, as above, is that these two constellations can't be used as baskets or dippers, just as the Pulling Ox constellation does not bear a yoke. If the narrator's old friendship is just mere words, “empty names,” then it is similarly useless.
*
The poem refers to the mythical story “The Cowherd and the Weaver Girl,” a common subject in traditional Chinese poetry (see for example Qin Guan's “To the Tune of ‘Magpie Bridge Immortal,' ” later in this volume). The Weaver girl was a granddaughter of the Emperor of heaven. Her job was to weave cloud embroidery, but after her marriage to the Cowherd she stopped working. The Emperor of heaven was not happy about this and had them separated by the Milky Way. Each year they could reunite only once, on the seventh day of the seventh month, by crossing the Celestial River (the Milky Way) on a bridge built for them by magpies.
1
”Morning Wind” and “Crickets” are two poems from the
Book of Songs.
2
Yan is in the area of today's Hebei province, and Zhao is in the area of Shanxi province.
(200–168 bce)
Jia Yi was a talented politician and poet under the Han dynasty reign of Emperor Wen. After suggesting Confucian reforms that made him enemies in the government, he lost his position as Grand Palace Grandee and became tutor to the King of Chang-sha, a low and damp malarial region that left him mourning his fate and feeling his life was in jeopardy. He is known for two rhyme prose (
fu)
poems, one on Qu Yuan and the other the one presented below, a poem about an owl (often considered a bird of ill omen) who flew into his room and caused him to meditate from a Daoist perspective upon mortality and mutability and the vicissitudes of a political life.
The year of
tan-o
, the first
summer month, on April's first day
with the slant sunlight going fast,
an owl flapped through my window bay
and settled in the corner of my mat.
It seemed at ease and without fear.
I wondered why—why was it that
this strange being had come to roost here?
I read my fortune-telling tome
and found this omen through my art:
“Wild birds fly into a man's home;
the resident will soon depart.”
And so I called out to the bird,
please tell me where I'm going, master
owl! If it's good, give me the word,
and if it's bad, name the disaster.
“Please let me know the date,” I said.
“Please tell me if it's imminent.”
The owl just sighed and raised its head
and flapped its wings. All that it meant
I couldn't tell (it could not talk)
but still I gleaned this implication:
“The world's ten thousand things don't stop
in moving through their transformation,
always they circle and revolve,
and driven off, they may return.
The energies blend and evolve
through forms that they'll slough off in turn.
How deep and endless it all seems!
Who can name all its forms and sides?
Disaster is what fortune leans
on; fortune's where disaster hides.
Joy and grief find the same door, as
good luck and bad find the same seat.
How powerful the Wu State was,
yet Fu Cha ended in defeat.
King Goujian conquered the Wu State
though at Huiqi his men were slaughtered.
Prime minister Li Si was great
yet ended up being drawn and quartered.
Fu Shuo was captured, thrown in prison,
but King Wu Ding made him his aide.
Thus providence and cataclysm
like rope strands twine into one braid.
So who can tell where fortune steers
when no one knows? It never dies.
In rapids water can be fierce,
a strong arm sends an arrow high.
Ten thousand things all swirl around
each other, quiver and transform.
While clouds go up the rain comes down
all tangled up into one storm.
The earth spins round, a potter's wheel
so vast and boundless one can't know
it's end, can't foretell heaven, steal
a glimpse of what's to come through Dao.
Our fates come slow or fast; we strive
but cannot know the fatal date.
The earth and heaven are a stove.
Nature's the craftsman of our fate
and yin and yang are his hot coals.
He melts ten thousand things like brass
or scatters them, and so he doles
out being and nonbeing in one mass.
There are no rules by which to bind
the thousand shifts, ten thousand changes
with no known end. One day you find
they chance to make you human. Strange
fortune that turned you to this form,
but why hold on to it so tight?
In death again you'll be transformed,
so why be worried, why feel fright?
The fool adores himself alone;
disdains all others, hoards his life
but men of wisdom don't disown
the rest, they have a broader sight.
The greedy die for gold in towers,
the heroes die for fame and live
as names, vain men die for power,
but common people just survive.
The driven and the needy are sent
far off, are pushed to east and west.
But the great man will not be bent,
at ease with change, his mind at rest.
The stupid man, bound by conventions,
will suffer like a man in jail; how
free the sage is, with purged attention,
he's unattached, alone with Dao.
The masses live a messy riot
with likes and hatreds in their hearts,
but the immortal man is quiet,
he moves with Dao in peace, apart.
Releasing mind and leaving shapes
behind, he loses self, transcends
and floats without support in space.
He soars with Dao beyond all ends
and sails off on a current, rides
until he finds a river isle
and leaves his body to the tide,
giving up selfhood with a smile.
His life is like a floating weed,
his death is like taking a nap.
He quiet as the void, and freed
to drift, his unmoored boat escapes.
He does not treasure his own life.
His open boat in emptiness
drifts on, and so this man can live
unburdened and without distress.
Be free and have trust in your fate
and be a man who seeks what's true
and though the thorns and weeds may scrape,
what can such trifles mean to you?”
(late second century bce)
Around 107 bce a Chinese princess from the Han royal family was married for political reasons to the chief of the Wusun tribe, a nomadic band in the northwest of China. When she arrived, she found her new husband aged and decrepit. They saw each other once every six months, or once a year, and couldn't communicate
since they had no common language. When her husband grew much older, she was forced to marry his grandson. This song is attributed to her.
My family married me off to
the king of the Wusun,
and I live in an alien land
a million miles from nowhere.
My house is a tent.
My walls are of felt.
Raw flesh is all I eat,
with horse milk to drink.
I always think of home
and my heart stings.
O to be a yellow snow goose
floating home again!
FROM THE MUSIC BUREAU
(c. 120 bce)
The
yuefu
refers to the Bureau of Music, which was set up around 120 bce by Emperor Wu of the Han dynasty and abolished in 6 bce by Emperor Ai. At the time of its dissolution, it employed 829 people. Its function was to collect songs by the common people, in part as a way of judging their reactions to the imperial government. The Music Bureau employees also performed rites and created sacrificial music. The collected songs came to be called
yuefu
songs, and in the history of Chinese poetry this term now describes a type of poem written in imitation of
yuefu
themes. As with the songs in the
Book of Songs
, the
popular themes of the folk songs have proved to be more enduring and affecting than the ritual hymns or the eulogies in praise of the dynasty. Though the majority of the poems fall into regular lines, there are also poems of irregular meter. In the Tang dynasty, “new Music Bureau” songs were created by Bai Juyi and Yuan Zhen that deviated from
yuefu
form and content, seeking formal freedoms and often satirizing the abuses of the ruling classes.
I stride out the east gate
and don't look back.
The next moment I'm in our doorway,
about to break down.
There's no rice in our pot.
I see hangers but no clothes.
So I draw my sword and again head out the east gate!
My wife grabs me by the shirt and sobs
“I'm not like other wives. I could care less for gold or rank.
I'm happy to eat gruel if I'm with you.
Look up! The sky is a stormy ocean.
Look down! See your small son's yellow face?
To go now is wrong.”
“Bah!” I say,
“I'm going now
before it's too late.
We can barely survive as it is
and white hairs are raining from my head.”
I sing a sad song when I want to weep,
gaze far off when I want to go home.
I miss my old place.
Inside me, a dense mesh of grief.
But there's no one to go back to,
no boat across that river.
This heart is bursting,
but my tongue is dead.
My guts are twisting like a wagon wheel
Breach in the Long Wall
*
*
Green so green is the river grass,
and I can't stop thinking of that far road,
can't bear thinking of that far road.
Last night I saw him in my dream,
dreamed him standing by my side.
Suddenly I was in another land,
another land and a different country.
I tossed and turned and woke apart.
The gaunt mulberry knows the sky's wind
and waters of the sea know cold heaven.
When travelers return in joy
not one has a word for me.
From a far land a traveler came
and left me two carp.
I asked my children to cook the fish
and inside they found a silk letter.
I knelt long and read the letter.
What did that letter say?
It started,
Try to eat.
and ended,
I miss you always
At fifteen I went to war
and I'm eighty now,
coming home at last.
I meet a man from my village
and ask who lives in my home now.
“Your house is over there,
where pine and cypress crowd the grave mounds.”
Rabbits scurry in the dog door,
pheasants fly among the rafters,
wild grain burgeons in the yard,
and sunflowers blossom by the well.
I beat the grain to make gruel,
pick sunflowers to make soup,
but when the gruel and soup are cooked
no one is there to serve the food.
I go to the east door and stand gazing
while tears soak my clothes.
(Southeast the Peacock Flies)
The peacock flies southeast
but every few miles it lingers, circling.
“I wove silk at thirteen
and learned to tailor at fourteen.
At fifteen I played the many-stringed harp,
and at sixteen recited the
Book of Songs
and
Book of Documents.
I became your wife at seventeen,
but my heart's core was often bitterly sad.
You worked as a governmental clerk;
I guarded my virtue and my passion never shifted.
I stayed in an empty chamber,
rarely able to see you.
I'd start to weave when the rooster crowed,
night after night without rest.
In three days I finished five bolts,
but Big Mother chose to complain that I was slow.
1
It wasn't that I didn't work fast enough,
but it's hard to be a wife in your home.
I can't bear being used this way.
There's no use in staying any longer.
So please tell your parents,
to send me back home soon.”
The clerk heard these words,
At Fifteen I Went to War
and begged his mother in the hall:
“I have a meager income,
and am fortunate to have her as my wife.
Once we bound our hair as children, we shared pillow and sheets,
2
and will stay friends even in Yellow Springs, where the dead go.
3
We've been together just two or three years,
not much time at all.
Her behavior is not wayward,
so why treat her unkindly?”
The mother said to the clerk:
“That's just too much! Such nonsense.
This woman is not polite,
her behavior is so free and headstrong
it's made me furious for a long time.
How dare you seek to have your way!
There's a nice girl, our east-side neighbor,
named Qin Luofu.
She has a beautiful figure, without rival.
As your mother, I will ask for her for you.
Just send your other wife away,
send her fast, without delay.”
The man knelt down and answered:
“I just want to let you know, mother:
if you send this woman away,
I will never marry again!”