The Selected Poems of Li Po
Page 5
TRAVELING SOUTH TO YEH-LANG, SENT TO MY WIFE IN YÜ-CHANG
This separation hurts, and Yeh-lang is beyond sky.
Moonlight fills the house, but news never comes.
I watched geese disappear north in spring, and now
they’re coming south, but no letter from Yü-chang.
STARTING UP THREE GORGES
Azure heaven pinched between Wu Mountains,
riverwater keeps streaming down like this,
and with riverwater cascading so suddenly
away, we’ll never reach that azure heaven.
Three mornings we start up Huang-niu Gorge,
and three nights find we’ve gone nowhere.
Three mornings and three nights: for once
I’ve forgotten my hair turning white as silk.
BEFORE MY BOAT ENTERS CH’Ü-T’ANG GORGE AND I LEAVE EASTERN PA BEHIND, I CLIMB THE HIGHEST WU MOUNTAIN PEAK. RETURNING LATE, I WRITE THIS ON A WALL
After traveling thousands of river miles,
a sea-born moon rising full fifteen times,
I’m about to start up Ch’ü-t’ang Gorge,
so I stop to hike among Wu Mountain peaks,
Wu Mountain peaks towering inexhaustibly
above Pa lands stretching away, limitless.
I climb fringes of sunlight, clutching vines,
and rest on rocky heights up beyond mist,
then race on, soon reaching the cragged
summit. There, no haze to the end of sight,
I look down cinnabar valleys left behind,
then up into azure heaven I’ve come so near,
azure heaven— if I could reach it, I could
sail away who knows where on the Star River.
Gazing at clouds, I know Shun’s ancient tomb,
and river thoughts reach earth-cradling seas.
Wandering around, so much to see in late
lonesome light, quiet thoughts grow countless.
Snowdrifts blaze, lighting empty valleys,
and the wind sings through forest trees.
On the trail home, twilight comes. And yet,
the beauty of things still doesn’t rest.
Gibbons call early along the cold river,
the moon among pine shadows already risen
and boundless, how boundless— moonlight,
and the sorrow in a gibbon’s pure cry,
unbearable as I toss my walking-stick aside
and leave the mountains for this lone boat.
MAKING MY WAY TOWARD YEH-LANG IN EXILE, I REMEMBER WALKING AMONG PEACH BLOSSOMS LONG AGO AT AUTUMN RIVER
Peaches in blossom, spring waters high,
white stones appear, then sink away,
and rustling wisteria branches sway,
a half moon drifting azure heaven.
Who knows how many fiddleheads wait,
clenched along paths I once walked?
In three years, back from Yeh-lang,
I’ll resolve my bones into gold there.
LEAVING K’UEI-CHOU CITY EARLY
Leaving K’uei-chou behind among dawn-tinted clouds,
I return a thousand miles to Chiang-ling in a day:
suddenly, no end to gibbons on both banks howling,
my boat’s breezed past ten thousand crowded peaks.
TRAVELING TUNG-T’ING LAKE WITH CHIA CHIH AND MY UNCLE, LI YEH
1
Not a trace of mist on this southern lake tonight,
we could sail for heaven across autumn waters.
Let’s follow distant Tung-t’ing moonlight all the way
and bargain for wine off among the white clouds.
2
Shun’s wives came to bury him and never returned.
Gone among Tung-t’ing’s autumn grasses, they’re goddesses
now. A jade mirror sweeps open across the bright lake,
and in a pure-color painting, Goddess Mountain appears.
AFTER CLIMBING PA-LING MOUNTAIN, IN THE WEST HALL AT K’AI-YÜAN MONASTERY: OFFERED TO A MONK BEYOND THIS WORLD ON HENG MOUNTAIN
There’s a sage monk on Heng Mountain,
the beauty of five peaks his true bones,
autumn moon alight in a sea of water
revealing his ten-thousand-mile heart.
A guardian gone into southern darkness,
pilgrims of the Way all visit him there,
sweet dew sprinkling down, a language
clear and cool gracing flesh and hair.
Bright lake a mirror of fallen heaven,
scented hall a gate into all this silver:
come for the view, I feed on kind winds,
new blossoms teaching mind this vast.
AT LUNG-HSING MONASTERY, CHIA AND I CUT BRANCHES FROM AN WU-T’UNG TREE, THEN GAZE AT YUNG LAKE
The green wu-t’ung’s branches down,
we can sit looking out at Yung Lake.
Autumn mountains bathed pure in rain,
forests radiant, soaked in emerald quiet,
its bright mirror of water turns lazily
in a painted screen of changing cloud.
A thousand eras lost to wind, and still
the great sages all share this moment.
WRITTEN ON THE WALL WHILE DRUNK AT WANG’S HOUSE NORTH OF THE HAN RIVER
I’m like some partridge or quail—
going south, then flying lazily north.
And now I’ve come to find you here,
a little wine returns me to the moon.
LOOKING FOR YUNG, THE RECLUSE MASTER
Emerald peaks polish heaven. I wander,
weeping clouds away, forgetting years,
looking for the ancient Way. Resting
against a tree, I listen to streamwater,
black ox dozing among warm blossoms,
white crane asleep in towering pines.
A voice calls through river-tinted dusk,
but I’ve descended into cool mist alone.
AFTER AN ANCIENT POEM
We the living, we’re passing travelers:
it’s in death alone that we return home.
All heaven and earth a single wayhouse,
the changeless grief of millennia dust,
moon-rabbit’s immortality balm is empty,
and the timeless fu-sang tree kindling.
Bleached bones lie silent, say nothing,
and how can ever-green pines see spring?
Before and after pure lament, this life’s
phantom treasure shines beyond knowing.
GAZING AT CRAB-APPLE MOUNTAIN
Up early, I watched the sun rise again.
At dusk, I watched birds return to roost.
A wanderer’s heart sours bitterly. And here
on Crab-Apple Mountain, it’s only worse.
FACING WINE
Never refuse wine. I’m telling you,
people come smiling in spring winds:
peach and plum like old friends, their
open blossoms scattering toward me,
singing orioles in jade-green trees,
and moonlight probing gold winejars.
Yesterday we were flush with youth,
and today, white hair’s an onslaught.
Bramble’s overgrown Shih-hu Temple,
and deer roam Ku-su Terrace ruins:
it’s always been like this, yellow dust
choking even imperial gates closed
in the end. If you don’t drink wine,
where are those ancient people now?
DRINKING ALONE ON A SPRING DAY
1
East wind fans clear, warm air through
shoreline trees ablaze with spring color,
and sunlight shimmers in green grasses,
falling blossoms scattering into flight.
Lone cloud returning to empty mountains,
birds returning, each to its own home:
in all this, nothing is without refuge.
I alone
have nowhere in life to turn.
Forever drunk, I face rock-born moon,
sing for wildflower sights and smells.
2
Flushed clouds of wandering immortals
fill my thoughts, and all their island
distances. Facing a winejar, boundless
occurrence settling into lazy repose,
I lay my ch’in against a towering pine
and gaze to far mountains, cup in hand.
Birds leaving vanish into endless sky.
The sun sets. A lone cloud returns.
It’s just that, here in this failing light,
long ago flares into colors of autumn.
A FRIEND STAYS THE NIGHT
Rinsing sorrows of a thousand forevers
away, we linger out a hundred jars of wine,
the clear night’s clarity filling small talk,
a lucid moon keeping us awake. And after
we’re drunk, we sleep in empty mountains,
all heaven our blanket, earth our pillow.
SPENDING THE NIGHT BELOW WU-SUNG MOUNTAIN, IN OLD MRS. HSÜN’S HOUSE
Overnight below Wu-sung, I find empty
quiet’s brought no one joy, and autumn
harvest only means farmhouses in grief,
neighbor women out pounding grain cold.
She bows before serving us watergrass,
radiant moonlight filling empty plates.
A mother cast so adrift shames the world:
out pleading three times and still no food.
FAREWELL TO HAN SHIH-YÜ WHO’S LEAVING FOR HUANG-TE
Where’s the splendor in embroidered robes of long ago?
Wine’s bought on credit tonight, but we’re together,
and in an instant, East Mountain’s all borrowed moonlight.
All night drunk, we sing farewell to a moonlit stream.
DRINKING ALONE
As if they could feel, spring grasses
turn shade beside the house jade-green.
When this east wind blows, grief comes.
I sit out in its bluster my hair white,
and drink alone, inviting my shadow.
Chanting lazily, I face trees in flower.
Old pine, what have you learned? Cold,
cold and desolate— who’s your song for?
On stone, fingers in moonlight dance
over the ch’in in my lapful of blossoms.
Out beyond this jar of wine, it’s all
longing, longing— no heart of mine.
SEEING THAT WHITE-HAIRED OLD MAN LEGEND DESCRIBES IN COUNTRY GRASSES
After wine, I go out into the fields,
wander open country— singing,
asking myself how green grass
could be a white-haired old man.
But looking into a bright mirror,
I see him in my failing hair too.
Blossom scent seems to scold me.
I let grief go, and face east winds.
THOUGHTS IN NIGHT QUIET
Seeing moonlight here at my bed,
and thinking it’s frost on the ground,
I look up, gaze at the mountain moon,
then back, dreaming of my old home.
LINES THREE, FIVE, SEVEN WORDS LONG
Autumn wind clear,
autumn moon bright,
fallen leaves gather in piles, then scatter,
and crows settling-in, cold, startle away.
Will we ever see, ever even think of each other again?
This night, this moment: impossible to feel it all.
SOUTH OF THE YANGTZE, THINKING OF SPRING
How many times will I see spring green
again, or yellow birds tireless in song?
The road home ends at the edge of heaven.
Here beyond the river, my old hair white,
my heart flown north to cloudy passes,
I’m shadow in moonlit southern mountains.
My life a blaze of spent abundance, my old
fields and gardens buried in weeds, where
am I going? It’s year’s-end, and I’m here
chanting long farewells at heaven’s gate.
ON GAZING INTO A MIRROR
Follow Tao, and nothing’s old or new.
Lose it, and the ruins of age return.
Someone smiling back in the mirror,
hair white as the frost-stained grass,
you admit lament is empty, ask how
reflections get so worn and withered.
How speak of peach and plum: timeless
South Mountain’s blaze in the end?
NOTES
6 STAR RIVER: the Milky Way.
CREATION: literally “create change” (tsao-hua), the force driving the ongoing process of change—a kind of deified principle.
8 HUI YUAN: A major figure in the history of Chinese Buddhism, Hui Yüan (334-416) emphasized dhyana (sitting meditation), teaching a form of Buddhism which contained early glimmers of Ch’an (Zen).
LING-YUN: Hsieh Ling-yün (385-433), the great pre-T’ang poet (see Introduction). When he first visited Hui Yüan in the Lu Mountains at his Tung-lin Monastery (see following poem), Ling-yün’s “heart submitted to him reverently.” Hsieh Ling-yün thereupon joined Hui Yüan’s spiritual community, and Buddhism became central to his life and work.
KALPA: In Ch’an, the term for an endlessly long period of time. Originally, in Vedic scripture, a kalpa is a world-cycle lasting 4,320,000 years.
10 CH’I: universal breath or life-giving principle.
HSI-HO: Hsi Ho drove the sun-chariot, which was pulled by six dragons.
LU YANG: Lu Yang’s army was in the midst of battle as evening approached. Fearing nightfall would rob him of victory, Lu Yang shook his spear at the setting sun, and it thereupon reversed its course.
12 Translated by Ezra Pound as “The River-Merchant’s Wife,” this poem is a modernist classic. Indeed, translated under his Japanese name (Rihaku) in Pound’s Cathay, Li Po was an important part of the modernist revolution Pound engineered. Nevertheless, there is no reason to think the husband is a river-merchant. The wandering Li Po was likely thinking figuratively of his own wife.
This poem is in the yüeh-fu form. Originally, yüeh-fu were folk songs, often critical of the government, which were collected by the Han emperor Wu’s Music Bureau (“yüeh-fu” means “Music Bureau”) to gauge the sentiments of the common people. Hence, as poets later adopted the form, using a common person as the poem’s speaker became a convention. As here, the speaker is often a woman left alone by her lover (cf. 20-21, 29, 65). See also p. 58 and note.
15 MENG HAO-JAN: the eldest of the great High T’ang poets.
20 CLOUDS-AND-RAIN LOVE: From the legend of a prince who, while visiting Wu Mountain, was visited in his sleep by a beautiful woman who said that she was the goddess of Wu Mountain. She spent the night with him, and as she left said: “At dawn I marshal the morning clouds; at nightfall I summon the rain.”
28 CH’IN: ancient stringed instrument which Chinese poets used to accompany the chanting of their poems. It is ancestor to the more familiar Japanese koto.
30 CHUANG-TZU… BUTTERFLY: This story, in which Chuang-tzu can’t decide whether he’s Chuang-tzu dreaming he’s a butterfly or a butterfly dreaming he’s Chuang-tzu, is found at the end of Chapter 2 in the Chuang Tzu.
EASTERN SEAS… WESTERN STREAMS: After China’s rivers flow into the eastern sea, they ascend to become the Star River (Milky Way) and flow back across the sky to descend again in the west, forming the headwaters of the rivers again.
33 Wu was an ancient kingdom in southeast China. The Wu emperor referred to in this poem is Fu Ch’a, whose weakness for beautiful women had disastrous consequences (much like Hsüan-tsung’s infatuation with Yang Kuei-fei, which gives these poems a layer of topical political comment). The legendary beauty Hsi Shih was sent to Fu Ch’a by Kou Chien, ruler of Yüeh, Wu’s rival kingdom to the south. Once Fu Ch’a had su
ccumbed to her pleasures and neglected his kingdom, Yüeh invaded and conquered Wu (472 B.C.), a subject taken up in the following poem.
36 T’AI MOUNTAIN: There are five especially sacred mountains in China, one for each of the four directions and one at the center. T’ai, in the east, is perhaps the most revered of these mountains, and its summit the destination of many pilgrims. The T’ai Mountain complex includes many lower ridges and summits, one of which is Heaven’s Gate.
41 Li Po’s way of life often led him to inns and winehouses where courtesans entertained guests with a popular song-form called tz’u. Probably imported from Li Po’s native central Asia, tz’u had been considered unfit for serious poets. Not surprisingly, Li Po was the first major poet to ignore this convention. Each tz’u had a different song-form, and poets would write lyrics that fit the music, which meant using quite irregular line lengths. Here, the title of the original tz’u is “Ch’ing P’ing,” hence: “Ch’ing P’ing Lyrics.” Tz’u thereafter grew in importance as a serious poetic form, eventually becoming the distinctive form of the Sung Dynasty.
47 SPIRIT: It was thought that in sleep one’s spirit could go off to visit someone else’s dreams.
48 SPIRIT IN SAD FLIGHT: Although the spirit can go some distance during sleep or when a person suffers some emotional trauma, after death, it can travel long distances.
52 FOUR-RECLUSE PASS: Toward the end of the Ch’in Dynasty, four sages known as the “Four White-heads” retired to Shang Mountain near Lo-yang in protest of the tyrannical government. When the Han Dynasty replaced the Ch’in (206 B.C.), they still refused to leave the mountain. SOUTH MOUNTAIN: Calling up such passages as “like the timelessness of South Mountain” in the Book of Songs (Shih Ching, 166/6), South Mountain came to have a kind of mythic stature as the embodiment of the elemental and timeless nature of the earth.