The Anchor Book of Chinese Poetry (28 page)

Late and late come the bells and drums in these long nights.
Now the Celestial River clearly shines just before dawn.
Cold frost flakes are heavy on the mandarin-duck tiles.
The kingfisher quilt is cold and there is no one to share it with him.
Slowly so slowly a year passes since the final farewell,
but her ghost never visits in his dreams.
Yet a shaman from Linqiong, a visitor in the capital,
says absolute sincerity can reach the soul of the dead.
As the emperor is so obsessed with her,
it is arranged to let this necromancer search for her soul.

Flying in the sky, riding clouds fast like lightning,
he searches everywhere in heaven and earth,
looking everywhere in blue space and down in the Yellow Springs,
¹
but she is nowhere to be seen in these two vast places.
Suddenly he hears of a fairy mountain in the sea.
The mountain is invisible, hidden in a thin mist of nothingness,
with delicate towers and pavilions where five-colored clouds arise.
Through blurred vision one seems to see many goddesses moving there.
One of them is named Taizhen;
her creamy skin and flowery face resemble Yang.
A gold gate to the west chamber and a knock on the jade door,
and the word is passed from one maid to another
that a messenger from the Han's emperor is here,
interrupting her dream in her nine-flower canopied bed.
Grabbing her clothes and pushing away her cushions,
she sits up. Pearl curtains and silver screens open one after another.
Her cloud-hair tilts to one side as she has just gotten up,
and she races down the hall half undressed,
wind puffing up her long loose sleeves,
recalling her dance to “The Rainbow and Feather Garment.”
Her jade face looks lonely and her tears are not yet dry.
She looks like a branch of pear flowers in spring rain.
With love in her gaze she thanks the emperor,
“After our parting we haven't seen or heard each other.
Yellow Springs is the land of the dead.
Our love came to an end in Zhaoyang Palace.
Here in the fairy Penglai Palace, the sun and the moon are long.
I look back and look down at the human world,
unable to see the capital, just dust and mist.
The only way is to use old souvenirs to express deep feelings.
I'll send a lacquered box and gold hairpin to you
and save one prong of the hairpin and one panel of the box,
snapping the decorated panel and hairpin in two.
Just make your determination as firm as the gold,
we will have a chance to meet in the human world or in heaven.”
Before the shaman departed she asked him to take a message
with vows that only the emperor and she knew.
It was said on the seventh day of the seventh month in Longevity Hall
they had said to each other in private at midnight:
“In the sky let's fly as birds sharing wings,
²
and on earth let's be trees with trunks growing as one.”
Though heaven and earth are long, they will cease at last,
but this regret stretches on and on forever.

In the tenth year of the Yuanhe Period [815], I was demoted to deputy governor and exiled to Jiujiang. In autumn the next year, I was seeing a friend off at the Penpu ferry when I heard through the night someone playing lute in a boat. The tune, crisp and metallic, carried the flavor of the music of the capital. I asked her who she was, and she told me she was a prostitute from the capital, Changan, and had learned to play lute from Master Mu and Master Cao. Now she was old and her beauty had declined and therefore she had married a merchant. So I ordered wine and asked her to play several tunes. We fell silent for a while. Then she told me about the pleasure of her youth, though now she is low and withered, drifting about on rivers and lakes. I had been assigned to posts outside the capital for two years and had enjoyed myself in peace. But touched by her words, that evening I began to realize what I truly felt about being exiled. So I wrote this long poem for her with a total of 612 characters, entitled “Song of the Lute.”

Seeing off a guest at night by the Xunyang River,
I felt autumn shivering on maple leaves and reed flowers.
I dismounted from my horse and my guest stepped on the boat;
we raised our cups for a drink without the music of pipes or strings.
We got drunk but not happy, mourning his departure.
When he embarked, the moon was half drowned in the river.
Suddenly we heard a lute sing across the water
and the host forgot to return home, and the guest stopped his boat.
Following the sound we softly inquired who the musician was,
the lute fell silent and the answer came after a pause.
We steered our boat close and invited her to join us,
with wine refilled and lamp relit, our banquet opened again.
It took a thousand pleases and ten thousand invitations before she appeared,
though with her lute she still hid half her face.
She plucked a few times to tune her strings.
Even before the melody formed one felt her emotion.
Each string sounded muted and each note meditative,
as if the music were narrating the sorrows of her life.
With eyebrows lowered she let her hands freely strum on and on,
pouring pent-up feelings out of her heart.
Softly strumming, plucking, sweeping, and twanging the strings,
she played “Rainbow Garment” then “Green Waist.”
The thick strings splattered like a rain shower,
the thin strings whispered privately like lovers,
splattering and whispering back and forth,
big pearls and small pearls dropping into a jade plate.
Smooth, the notes were skylarks chirping under flowers.
Uneven, the sound flowed like a spring under ice,
the spring water cold and strained, the strings congealing silence,
freezing to silence, till the sounds couldn't pass, and were momentarily at rest.
Now some other hidden sorrow and dark regret arose
and at this moment silence was better than sound.
Suddenly a silver vase exploded and the water splashed out,
iron horses galloped through and swords and spears clashed.
When the tune stopped, she struck the heart of the instrument,
all four strings together, like a piece of silk tearing.
Silence then in the east boat and the west.
All I could see in the river's heart was the autumn moon, so pale.

Silently she placed the pick between the strings,
straightened her garment and stood up with a serious face.
She told us, “I was a girl from the capital,
lived close to the Tombs of the Toad.
I finished studying lute at the age of thirteen,
and was first string in the Bureau of Women Musicians.
When my tunes stopped, the most talented players were humbled,
other girls were constantly jealous when they saw me made up,
the rich young city men competed to throw me brocade head scarves,
and I was given countless red silks after playing a tune.
My listeners broke hairpins and combs when they followed my rhythm.
I stained my blood-colored silk skirt with wine
and laughed all year and laughed the next,
and autumn moon and spring wind passed unnoticed.
My brother was drafted and my madame died.
An evening passed, and when morning came my beauty was gone.
My door became desolate and horses seldom came,
and as I was getting old I married a merchant.
My merchant cared more about profit than being with me.
A month ago he went to Fuliang to buy tea.
I am here to watch this empty boat at the mouth of the river.
The bright moon circles around the boat and the water is very cold.
Deep into the night I suddenly dreamed about my young days
and wept in dream as tears streaked through my rouge.”
I was already sighing, listening to her lute,
but her story made me even sadder.
I said, “We both are exiled to the edge of this world
and our hearts meet though we've never met before.
Since I left the capital last year,
I was exiled to Xunyang and became sick.
Xunyang is too small to have any music;
all year round I heard no strings or pipes.
My home is close to the Pen River, low and damp,
and yellow reeds and bitter bamboo surround the house.
What do you think I hear there day and night?
Cuckoos chirping blood and the sad howls of apes.
Spring river, blossoming morning and autumn moon night—
I often have my wine and drink by myself.
It is not that there are no folk songs or village flutes,
but their yawps and moans are just too noisy for my ear.
Tonight I heard your lute speak
and my ear pricked up, listening to fairy music.
Please don't decline, sit down to play another tune,
and I'll write a ‘Song of the Lute' for you.”
Touched by my words she stood there for a long time,
then sat down and tuned up her strings and speeded up the rhythm.
Sad and touching it was different from her last song
and everyone started to weep.
If you ask, “Who shed most tears in this group?”
The marshal of Jiangzhou's black gown was all wet.

In spring snow at Blue Bridge you were called back to Changan.
In autumn wind I was exiled to the Qin Mountains.
Whenever I got to a horse station I would dismount
and meander around walls and pillars, hoping to find your poems.

When offices are open I'm too lazy to apply for office.
And though I have lands I'm too lazy to farm them.
My roof leaks but I'm too lazy to fix it
and I'm too lazy to patch my gown when it splits.
I'm too lazy to pour my wine into my cup;
it's like my cup is always empty.
I'm too lazy to play my lute;
it's as if it has no strings.
My family says the steamed rice is all eaten;
I want some but am too lazy to hull it.
I receive letters from relatives and friends
I want to read, but am too lazy to slit them open.
I heard about Qi Shuye
who spent all his life in laziness,
but he played the lute and smelted iron.
Compared with me, he isn't lazy at all!

“The ignorant speak, but the sage stay silent.”
I heard this saying from Laozi.
But if Laozi knew the Way,
why did he write a book of five thousand characters?

There is no one among men that has not a special failing;
And my failing consists in writing verses.
I have broken away from the thousand ties of life;
But this infirmity still remains behind.
Each time that I look at a fine landscape,
Each time that I meet a loved friend,
I raise my voice and recite a stanza of poetry
And marvel as though a god had crossed my path.

Ever since the day I was banished to Hsün-yang
Half my time I have lived among the hills.
And often, when I have finished a new poem,
Alone I climb the road to the Eastern Rock.
I lean my body on the banks of white Stone;
I pull down with my hands a green cassia branch.
My mad singing startles the valleys and hills;
The apes and birds all come to peep,
Fearing to become a laughingstock to the world,
I choose a place that is unfrequented by men.

Translated by Arthur Waley

Our party scattered at yellow dusk and I came home to bed;
I woke at midnight and went for a walk, leaning heavily on a friend.
As I lay on my pillow my vinous complexion, soothed by sleep,  
grew sober: In front of the tower the ocean moon, accompanying the tide, had  
risen. The swallows, about to return to the beams, went back to roost  
again; The candle at my window, just going out, suddenly revived its  
light. All the time till dawn came, still my thoughts were muddled;
And in my ears something sounded like the music of flutes and  
strings.

Translated by Arthur Waley

Keep off your thoughts from things that are past and done;
For thinking of the past wakes regret and pain.
Keep off your thoughts from thinking what will happen;
To think of the future fills one with dismay.
Better by day to sit like a sack in your chair;
Better by night to lie like a stone in your bed.
When food comes, then open your mouth;
When sleep comes, then close your eyes.
Translated by Arthur Waley

At dawn I sighed to see my hairs fall;
At dusk I sighed to see my hairs fall.
For I dreaded the time when the last lock should go….
They are all gone and I do not mind at all!
I have done with that cumbrous washing and getting dry;
My tiresome comb for ever is laid aside.
Best of all, when the weather is hot and wet,
To have no topknot weighing down on one's head!
I put aside my messy cloth wrap;
I have got rid of my dusty tasseled fringe.
In a silver jar I have stored a cold stream,
On my bald pate I trickle a ladleful.
Like one baptized with the Water of Buddha's Law,
I sit and receive this cool, cleansing joy.
Now
I know why the priest who seeks repose
Frees his heart by first shaving his head.

Translated by Arthur Waley