Chinese Poetic Writing
Page 18
Cockcrow, moon on the thatch of the inn.
Footprints, in the rime on the planks of the bridge.
Leaves all fallen, on the mountain road,
Blossoms shine, on the post station wall.
Dreaming again of Du-ling:
Wild geese at rest, scattered on the pond.
* * *
Lines 3 and 4: see this page–this page concerning the omission of the verb.
Lines 7 and 8: The ambiguity presented in these lines is apparent in the original. While it may be the geese that dream of Du-ling, it may also be understood to be the poet himself, newly awakened from such dreams, looking with nostalgia upon the wild geese that linger on the marsh as he departs upon his journey. Du-ling is a famous spot near Chang-an where the poet once lived.
WEN TING-YUN
South Ferry, in Li-zhou
Quiet, vacant waters face the setting sun
Distant, twisted islets blend with the hills of the shore.
On the waves a horse is neighing; see, where the oars go!
By the willows men are resting, awaiting there the boat’s return.
From clumps of weeds along the strand, flocks of gulls disperse.
Above the river’s endless field, a single egret flies.
But who’ll still board this craft, in search of old Fan Li,
On the misted waves of Five Lakes, to lose all worldly schemes?
Gu-ti-shi
(Ancient-style Poetry)
LI BAI
Drinking Alone under the Moon
Among the flowers, a jug of wine.
Drinking alone, no companion.
Raise the cup, invite bright moon.
And my shadow, that makes three.
The moon knows nothing of drinking.
My shadow merely follows me.
I will go with moon and shadow,
Joyful, till spring end.
I sing, the moon dances.
I dance, my shadow tumbles.
Sober, we share our joy.
Drunk, each goes his way.
Forever bound, to ramble free,
To meet again, in the Milky Way.
* * *
See this page. Recalling the legend according to which Li Bai drowned while attempting to drink the moon from a lake, we cite the following song of the poet:
White apes in the autumn,
Dancing, light as snow.
In a single bound, into the branches,
Drinking, from the water, the moon.
LI BAI
Ancient Air
Climbed high, to gaze upon the sea,
Heaven and Earth, so vast, so vast.
Frost clothes all things in Autumn,
Winds waft, the broad wastes cold.
Glory, splendor; eastward flowing stream,
This world’s affairs, just waves.
White sun covered, its dying rays,
The floating clouds, no resting place.
In lofty Wu-tong trees nest lowly finches.
Down among the thorny brush the Phoenix perches.
All that’s left, to go home again,
Hand on my sword I sing, “The Going’s Hard.”
* * *
Lines 9 and 10: Injustice reigns in the world; the mediocre occupy high position, while better men live in their shadows.
LI BAI
A Song of Bathing
If it’s perfumed, don’t brush your cap
Fragrant of orchid, don’t shake your gown.
This world hates a thing too pure.
Those who know will hide their light.
At Cang-lang dwells a fisherman:
“You and I, let us go home together.”
* * *
Lines 1 and 2: “Brush cap” and “shake gown” are conventional metaphors for the taking up of official position.
Line 5: The figure of the fisherman often represents detachment and purity preserved. The allusion here is to the famous encounter between Qu Yuan (the great poet of the Warring States period) and a fisherman. Qu Yuan, going by the riverside, explains the reason for his exile to the fisherman: “All the world is corrupt, I would stay pure; all the world is drunk, I would stay sober.” The fisherman, before going off, sings, “When the water is clear, I wash my hat strings; when the water is muddy, I wash my feet.”
LI BAI
A Farewell Banquet for My Uncle, The Revisor Yun, at the Pavilion of Xie Tiao
It’s broken faith and gone, has yesterday; I couldn’t keep it.
Tormenting me, my heart, today, too full of sorrow.
High wind sees off the autumn’s geese, ten thousand li.
Facing this it’s meet to drink upon the high pavilion.
Immortal letters, bones of Jian’an.
Here Xie Tiao is clearly heard again.
All embracing, his thoughts fly free,
Mount to blue heaven, caress the bright moon.
Grasp the sword and strike the water, still the water, flows.
Raise the cup to drown your grief, grief only grows.
Life in this world: few satisfactions.
In the dawning, hair unbound, to float free in the skiff.
* * *
The poet Xie Tiao (fifth century) built the pavilion when he was governor of Xuan-zhou at An-hui.
Line 3: autumn’s geese = symbol of distance and separation.
Line 5: The era Jian-an (A.D. 196–219), during the late Han, was one of the most fecund periods of Chinese poetry.
LI BAI
Ancient Air
Westward over Lotus Mountain
Afar, far off: Bright Star!
Magnolia blooms in her white hand,
With airy step she climbs Great Purity.
Rainbow robes, trailing a broad sash,
Floating she brushes the heavenly stairs,
And invites me to mount the Cloud Terrace,
There to salute the immortal Wei Shu-qing.
Ravished, mad, I go with her,
Upon a swan to reach the Purple Vault.
There I looked down, on Luo-yang’s waters:
Vast sea of barbarian soldiers marching,
Fresh blood spattered on the grasses of the wilds.
Wolves, with men’s hats on their heads.
* * *
Li Bai wrote a number of poems on the theme of long rambles in dreams (in Taoist holy places), the most famous of which is “A Farewell on the Mountain of the Heavenly Mother.”
Lines 12–14: despite his attempt at evasion, the poet cannot forget the world, ravaged by war, where tyranny reigns.
LI BAI
Ballad of Chang-gan
My hair barely covered my forehead then.
My play was plucking flowers by the gate.
You would come on your bamboo horse,
Riding circles round my bench, and pitching green plums.
Growing up together here, in Chang-gan.
Two little ones; no thought of what would come.
At fourteen I became your wife,
Blushing and timid, unable to smile,
Bowing my head, face to dark wall.
You called a thousand times, without one answer.
At fifteen I made up my face,
And swore that our dust and ashes should be one,
To keep faith like “the Man at the Pillar.”
How could I have known I’d climb the Watch Tower?
For when I was sixteen you journeyed far,
To Qu-tang Gorge, by Yan-yu Rocks.
In the fifth month, there is no way through.
There the apes call, mournful to the heavens.
By the gate, the footprints that you left,
Each one greens with moss,
So deep I cannot sweep them.
The falling leaves, the autumn’s wind is early,
October’s butterflies already come,
In pairs to fly above the western garden’s grass.
Wounding the heart of the wife who waits,
Sitting in sadness, bright face growing old.
Sooner or later, you’ll come down from Sanba,
Send me a letter, let me know.
I’ll come out to welcome you, no matter how far,
All the way to Long Wind Sands.
* * *
Chang-gan is located in Jiang-su province near Nan-jing.
Line 13: the Man at the Pillar = a legendary personage who awaited his beloved in vain beneath a bridge, preferring to die in the rising water rather than to leave the place of their appointed meeting.
Line 14: Watch Tower = one of the many mountains in China that bear this name, in memory of an abandoned woman who climbed each day to the mountain top to keep vigil for her husband’s return.
Last line: Long Wind Sands, on the riverside many days from Chang-gan. The Blue River is navigable from Jiangsu upstream to Si-chuan. All along the river are ports that favor the trade of the river merchants. Tang poetry often deals with the travels of these merchants and the fate of their wives, often left for long months. See on the same theme the quatrain by Li Yi, “Song of South of the River,” this page.
LI BAI
Ancient Air
Moon’s tint, it can’t be swept away;
The traveler’s grief, no way to say it.
White dew proclaims on Autumn robes;
Fireflies flit above the grasses.
Sun and moon are in the end extinguished;
Heaven and Earth, the same, will rot away.
Cricket cries in the green pine tree;
He’ll never see this tree grow old.
Potions of long life can only fool the vulgar;
The blind find all discernment hard.
You’ll never live to be a thousand,
Much anguish leads to early death.
Drink deep, and dwell within the cup.
Conceal yourself, your only treasure.
DU FU
Lament on Chen-tao
First month of winter, ten counties’ gentle youths’
Blood serves for water in the Chen-tao swamps.
Broad wilds, clear skies, no sounds of battle.
Forty thousand volunteers, in one day, dead.
The Tartar returns, arrows bathed in blood,
Still singing his barbarous songs as he drinks in the market.
The people turn away, stand weeping, facing north,
Day and night their hope, the army may return.
* * *
At Chen-tao, in 756, during the rebellion of An Lu-shan, the Chinese army was disastrously defeated.
DU FU
Dreaming of Li Bai
Parted by death, I swallow my sobs.
Parted in life, I sorrow incessant.
South of the River, that pestilential place,
The wanderer’s gone, and no word comes.
Old friend, you come into my dreams,
As if you knew how I longed to see you,
But I can only fear it means you’re dead:
Could your living soul have come so far?
Your spirit came, the grove of maples greened.
Your spirit left, the high cold pass grew dark.
But you’re caught in their net now;
How could you fly free?
Falling moon fills the room to the beams,
And almost lets me glimpse your shining face.
The waters deep, the waves, spread out.
Don’t let the dragon get you.
* * *
Du Fu and Li Bai are known to have associated during two periods, during which they established a deep friendship. In 757 (or 758), during the An Lu-shan Rebellion, Li Bai, implicated in the affair of Prince Lin, was condemned to death. The sentence was commuted to banishment in Yun-nan in the malarial south of China. Du Fu, at the time of the poem living in Si-chuan, feared for the life of his friend. This poem is among the ten or so poems in which Du Fu expresses not only his friendship and admiration for Li Bai, but moreover his sadness and anger at the world’s treatment of genius, and the demons of jealousy that await the fall of the valorous man.
Lines 13 and 14: Du Fu, awakened from his dream, sees the silhouette of his friend once more, lit by the moon.
DU FU
Peng-ya
I recall, when we first fled the Tartars,
We went north, and the way was hard.
Deep in the night on the road to Peng-ya,
Moon shone on the White Water hills.
The whole family long on foot,
And when we met someone, always shamefaced.
Here and there birds crying in the gullies,
Never a soul coming the other way.
My little daughter in her hunger took a bite of me.
Afraid her cries would bring on wolves and tigers,
I’d closed her mouth against my chest,
But she only cried the louder.
My little son tried hard to understand,
Collected bitter plums, to eat.
Ten days, half thunderstorm,
Through the mud, linked hand in hand,
With no rain gear at all.
The path slick, our clothing freezing.
Sometimes, as hard as we tried,
In a whole day, two miles at most.
Wild fruits for our hunger,
Low boughs, our shelter’s beams.
Morning trudging through the rocky creeks,
Evening searching the sky for some hut’s smoke.
We rested awhile at Zhou-jia Valley,
Before the march through Lu-zi Pass,
With my old friend Sun Zai,
His bounty reaching to the clouds.
When we came, already dusk,
They lit the lamps, threw wide the double gates.
They brought warm water, bathed our feet,
Hung out bright banners, to call our spirits back.
He called his wife and children out:
They gazed on us; tears brimmed their eyes.
My whole brood was fast asleep.
Roused, they were favored with a plate of provender.
“We’ll swear an oath, you and I,
Forever to be brothers.”
And the hall where we sat was prepared for our stay,
That we might dwell secure, and at our ease.
Who else would dare, in these hard times,
To open his heart, and his arms, to us?
Since we left, a year has passed.
The Tartars still plot turmoils.
How I wish that we had wings,
To fly, to alight, before you.
* * *
Poem written in 757.
DU FU
Red Phoenix
Don’t you see?
Of all the hills in Xiang, Mount Heng’s the highest,
And at its peak, Red Phoenix cries.
He twists and he cranes as eyes seek for his peers,
Then his wings droop in the silence of his weary heart.
Gazing down he sees that all the birds are caught in one great net,
Nor even the tiniest sparrow can squeeze through the mesh.
This bird would share his food, if only with the ants.
Let it make the owls to hoot with anger, if it will.
* * *
Du Fu is haunted by the phoenix, a legendary bird charged with religious significance. In along poem entitled “Terrace of the Phoenix” he compares himself to this bird, which, through the offering of its own flesh and blood, would seek to comfort the suffering of the world:
I would open my heart, and let the blood flow,
Giving food and drink to the neglected.
My heart, become the bamboo fruit, which satisfies.
No need to look for other food.
My blood, a fountain of thirst-quenching wine,
Better than these springs by which I flee….
DU FU
The Pressgang at Shi-hao Village
Evening, I found lodging at Shi-hao.
&n
bsp; That night a pressgang came for men.
An old man jumped the wall,
While his old wife went through the gate to meet them.
The officer cursed, so full of anger.
The old woman cried, so bitter.
Then I heard her approach him and speak:
“Our three sons went off in defense of Ye-cheng.
Now one has sent a letter home,
To tell us that the other two are slain.
He who remains yet clings to life.
They who have gone are dead forever.
At home here there is no one else…
But a grandson at the breast,
And his mother, not yet able to leave him.
And anyway, she’s not a whole skirt to put on…
This old one, though her strength is ebbing,
Begs you, sir, to let her come tonight,
To answer the draft for Heyang.
“I might still help to cook the morning meal.”
Night lengthened, the voices died away,
Owindling to a sound like stifled sobs.
The sky brightened, I climbed back toward the path.
Alone, the old man made farewells.
* * *
This poem is analyzed on this page–this page, to illustrate the difference between the gu-ti-shi (ancient-style poetry) and the lü-shi (regulated verse).
DU FU
On Seeing the Sword Dance Performed by a Disciple of Madam Gong-sun
Long ago there was a beauty, Gong-sun her name.
In a single gesture of her sword dance all the world was overthrown.
The watchers, massed in mountains, their color paled away,
And heaven and earth bowed long before her.
Bending back, the bow of Great Yi’s shot, and nine suns falling.
Rising up, a heavenly being, aloft, on dragons soaring.
Approaching: she is lightning, thunder; holds the harvest of storm’s fury