The two palaces gaze at each other from afar,
yet their watchtowers seem just a hundred feet apart.
Let's exhaust ourselves in banquets to entertain our hearts!
Sorrows and melancholy—who needs such pressure?
4
At today's great banquet
it's too hard to list all our joys.
The zither vibrates with escaping notes,
a new melody so fine it entrances us.
The talented sing high words,
and we who know music understand.
Our hearts share such wishes,
but they've never poured out like this.
Our being is only one life,
up and gone like floating dust.
Why not whip your horse
ahead of others at the ferry landing?
Staying poor is worth nothing.
It just means long suffering on a rutted road.
5
A tall tower in the northwest,
tall as floating clouds,
with patterned lattice windows
and a pavilion up three flights of steps
where strings and voices are heard,
a sound so plaintive and bitter.
Who could play and sing a song like this
except the wife of Jiliang?1
Clear autumn sounds blow through the prelude,
then the main melody shifts and varies,
one strike then repeated phrases
with the lingering force of grief.
I don't regret the singer's sorrow,
but mourn how few truly understand her.
If only we were a pair of singing cranes
beating our wings and soaring high!
6
I cross the river to pick lotus flowers
where fragrant grasses grow in the orchid lake.
But to whom can I send these flowers?
My love is far away on the road.
I turn my head and look home
down the road so long and wide.
We share one heart yet live apart
in sorrow and grief till age takes us.
7
Clear moon pours bright light at night
and crickets sing in the eastern wall.
The Big Dipper's jade handle points to midwinter,
all the stars incredibly clear.
White dewdrops hang to wild grass,
as seasons flow by fast and change.
Autumn cicadas rub their wings in trees.
Where have black swallows migrated to?
Once we studied together,
but you have soared on powerful wings,
forgetting we once held hands.
You abandoned me like old footprints.
The South Basket and North Dipper can't be used
and the Pulling Ox won't bear a yoke.1
Indeed, nothing is solid as rock.
What's the use of empty names?
8
Soft and frail is a solitary bamboo
though rooted in the foothills of Mount Tai.
I married you just recently,
a creeper climbing up its host.
There is a time for creepers to spread,
but husband and wife should stay as one.
Three hundred miles away from marriage,
you're past the mountain range.
Missing you makes me old.
Why does your carriage return so late?
Orchid flowers grieve me,
unfolding themselves in bright colors.
If you don't pick them before they are past season,
they'll wither with autumn weeds,
but since you are so faithful to our marriage,
what can I say, humble as I am?
9
There is a wonderful tree in the courtyard,
rich flowers among its green leaves.
Breaking a twig, I pick its blossoms
to send them to the man I love.
The fragrance fills my blouse and sleeves.
You are too far off for me to send them.
Not that these flowers are some great gift;
they give me grief of long separation.
10**
Far and far is the Cowherd Star,
bright so bright is the Weaver Girl.
Slender and white, her hands are moving
click-cluck shuttling over the loom.
She doesn't finish one piece in a day
and her tears spin down as rain.
The Celestial River is clear and shallow;
there is no great distance between the two.
Across the brimming water
the Weaver gazes with silent love.
11
I turn my carriage around to return,
slowly, slowly, on a long journey.
I look around and see nothing but uncertainties,
and a hundred plants shaking in east wind.
All that I meet on the road looks unfamiliar.
How can I not age fast?
To rising and falling there is a season,
but I can't stand still being a failure.
A man's life is not made of gold or stones,
so how can he reach longevity?
Suddenly life goes through final transformation.
A great name is a great treasure.
12
The east wall is tall and long,
extending and connecting with itself.
Swirling winds rush up from the earth
and autumn grass is melancholy and yellow;
the four seasons keep changing
and soon it is year's end again!
“Morning Wind” refreshes my longing;
“Crickets” makes me sad about confinement.1
I should go wild and let my passions free.
Why should I bind myself so tightly?
In Yan and Zhao beauties abound,2
pretty as jade,
and I see a girl wearing a silk dress
and practicing a Qingshang tune in a doorway.3
Your music is so sad
the notes so fast and high strung!
My heart flies to you as I tie my robe
pacing back and forth and fantasizing
I am with you, a pair of swallows flying
with mud in beaks to build a nest under your roof.
13
I drive my wagon to the east gate
and gaze at distant tombs north of the city
where poplars sigh and sigh in wind
and pines and cypress line the road.
Underneath are the ancient dead.
Endless, endless is their long evening
in deep sleep under the Yellow Springs.
Through thousands of years they never wake.
Powerfully yin and yang cycle past
and years alive are like morning dew,
human existence just a short trip,
not solid like gold or stone.
Ten thousand generations have seen each other off
and no sage or saint is an exception.
Trying pills and lotions for immortality,
many people poisoned their lives.
Much better to drink great wine
and wear silk and satin clothes.
14
Day by day the dead are receding
and the living coming closer.
Looking straight through the city gate,
I see nothing but burial mounds and tombs,
ancient tombs plowed into fields
Qingshang tunes are three tunes based on yuefu (Music Bureau) songs.
and ancient cypress trees cut down as firewood.
Poplar trees catch sad wind
and rustling, rustling this sorrow kills.
I'd like to return to my home village,
but there is no road to take me there.
15
Man dies within a hundred years
but i
s filled with a thousand years of grief.
Since day is short and night seems long
why not wander with a candle
seeking joy while you are in time?
Don't wait for your time to come.
The fools who care just for cash
will be sneered at in the future.
So hard to come across a man
like Wang Ziqiao, immortal.
16
Chilly, chilly, the year-end clouds darken.
Mole crickets sing sadly in the evening.
Cold winds are getting sharper,
but traveling man you have no winter clothes.
You left your embroidered quilt at Luopu,
and don't share a gown with me anymore.
I sleep alone through a long night,
and see your face in my dream,
good man who cherishes me, his old joy.
Your carriage came and you gave me marriage ribbons,
saying, “I wish I could smile more often
and come back with you in the same carriage.”
You leave my dream so quickly,
do not stay in my chamber.
Since you have no wings to glide on morning wind,
how does the wind carry you back?
I look around to let my heart unfold,
stretch my neck, looking into distance for your gaze.
I stand here seized by grief and wet my door with tears.
17
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.
18
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?
19
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.
JIA YI
(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 Owl
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,
The Anchor Book of Chinese Poetry Page 9