The Anchor Book of Chinese Poetry

by Tony Barnstone

  TAO QIAN

  (c.365–427)

  Daoist poet Tao Qian (also known as Tao Yuanming) is famous for his prose “Preface to the Poem on the Peach Blossom Spring” and for his remarkable poems celebrating a return to nature and an epicurean love of wine. He lived during the politically unstable Six Dynasties Period (220–589), and his work expresses the anxiety and weariness of that time. He held a succession of official posts, working as a military adviser and a magistrate, but he was unsatisfied with this life and retired to the country, where he lived out his remaining years as a farmer. His work reflects this life: he is primarily known as a poet of nature, China's first great landscape poet, contrasting nature's purity and simplicity (exemplified by his own self-representation as a farmer-sage) with the “dusty” world of the court and the marketplace: “After all those years like a beast in a cage/I've come back to the soil again.” Like Thoreau in his beanfield, Tao Qian became the quintessential model of the official who has escaped “the world's net” for a life closer to spiritual values. While countless later poets (notably Wang Wei) echo his lines when they write about the country life, Tao Qian was not appreciated in his own time. The dominant mode of poetry in his day was flowery and artificial. The great poets of the Tang and Song dynasties, however, came to treasure Tao's poetry for its measured simplicity, its lack of adornment, and its conscious use of common words. Approximately 130 of his poems survive.

  Return to My Country Home

  (Five Poems)

  1

  When young I couldn't bear the common taste,

  I loved the mountains and the peaks,

  yet I fell into the world's net

  and wasted thirteen years.

  But trapped birds long for their old woods

  and fish in the pool still need deep waters,

  so I'm breaking earth in the south field,

  returning to the country to live simply,

  with just ten acres

  and a thatch roof over some rooms.

  Elm and willow shade the back eaves,

  rows of peach and plum trees by the front hall.

  A distant village lost in haze;

  smoke twines from neighbors' houses.

  From deep in the lanes, dogs bark;

  a cock chuckles high up in a mulberry tree.

  No dust or clutter within my courtyard door,

  just empty rooms and time to spare.

  After all those years like a beast in a cage

  I've come back to the soil again.

  2

  No social events in the fields,

  no carriage wheels whir through these back roads.

  Bright sun, but I close my cane door

  and empty myself in empty rooms.

  Sometimes I meet the peasants

  going here and there in palm-leaf raincoats,

  but we speak of nothing

  except how the crops are doing.

  Each day my hemp and mulberries grow taller

  and my land gets wider every day

  but at any time the frost or hail

  could beat them flat as a field of weeds.

  3

  I plant beans under South Mountain.

  The weeds flourish but not bean sprouts.

  Morning, I get up to weed the fields.

  I return, shouldering the moon and my hoe.

  On narrow paths through thick grass and brush,

  evening dew soaks my clothes,

  but wet clothes don't bother me

  so long as I follow my heart.

  4

  After so long away from these mountains and lakes,

  today I'm wildly pleased in the woods and fields.

  Now nephews and nieces hold my hands

  as we part brush and enter the wild ruin of a town.

  We search through hills and grave mounds

  and the lingering signs of ancient houses,

  scattered wells and traces of hearths,

  rotten stumps of bamboo and mulberry groves.

  I ask a man gathering wood here,

  “What happened to all these people?”

  The woodsman turns to me and says

  “They're dead, that's all, there's not one left!”

  In thirty years, at court or market, all things change.

  I know now these are not empty words,

  that we live among shadows and ghosts

  and return at last to nothingness.

  5

  I was upset, walking home alone with my staff,

  zigzag through brush and weeds

  and by a mountain brook clear and shallow,

  just deep enough to wash my feet,

  but now I filter the new-made wine

  and cook a chicken to entertain neighbors;

  the room darkens as the sun sets,

  we use firewood as bright candles,

  all is joy, the night seems too short,

  and it's dawn before we know it.

  Begging for Food

  Hunger came and drove me on,

  though I didn't know where to go,

  walking, walking till I hit a village.

  I knocked on a door, short for words,

  but the owner of the house saw my need,

  gave me aid, didn't let me come for nothing.

  We talked in harmony till sunset,

  raised cups and drained them dry.

  Happy to have a new friend,

  I improvise this poem.

  I'm moved that you treated me like the washerwoman

  who fed Han Xin,1 and wish I were as talented as him.

  Deep in my heart I know how to thank you:

  I will repay you after death.

  I Stop Drinking

  My home is where the town stops.

  Carefree and alone, I stop then walk

  then stop and sit in the shade of tall trees.

  My path stops within my brushwood gate.

  The best taste is to stopper my mouth with garden vegetables.

  My greatest joy stops with my youngest son.

  All my life I have not stopped drinking.

  I'm never happy when I stop.

  If I stop at night I cannot sleep well;

  if I stop in the morning, I cannot get up.

  Every day I tried to stop drinking,

  but my energy flow stopped and became disordered.

  I only knew that abstinence stops pleasure

  without knowing that to stop has benefits.

  Now I truly realize how good it is to stop drinking,

  and am really going to stop this morning.

  I will stop from now on,

  till I reach the Isle of Immortals where the sun stops

  till my old face stops and a clear face returns.

  I won't be satisfied till I've stopped for ten thousand years.

  Drinking Alone When It Rains Day After Day

  All creatures start and end in death.

  Since ancient times this has been true.

  It's said there were immortals like Song and Qiao,1

  but where are they now?

  An old man gives me a present of wine

  and says drink will make me live forever.

  A few sips and one hundred emotions recede.

  More cups and I forget the heavens.

  Have the heavens really dissolved in this?

  Let me be as natural as nature, and nature as natural as me.

  The cranes in clouds have amazing wings;

  in a flash they touch the universe's eight corners.

  Since I embraced my own true nature

  I have worked for forty years

  and long ago transformed my body,

  but my mind still exists, and what else is there to say?

  Scolding My Kids

  My hair is gray on both sides,

  my muscles and skin no longer firm.

  Though I have five sons,

  none of them is fond of ink brushes and paper.


  Ah Shu is twice eight years old;

  no one can match his laziness.

  Ah Xuan is the age to be devoted to study

  yet does not like writing at all.

  Yong and Duan are both thirteen;

  they cannot tell six from seven.

  The youngest son Tong is almost nine

  and only cares to scrounge for pears and nuts.

  Since that is what heaven decrees for me,

  let me finish the thing in my cup!

  Fire in the Sixth Month in 408 ce

  I had my thatched cottage built in a poor lane,

  willing to give up elegant carriages,

  but in June a long violent wind rushed

  and woods and cottage caught fire in a second.

  My house went up, all rooms gone,

  so I live in twin boats moored in shade by the gate.

  Vast is the night sky of a new autumn.

  Soon the moon will be high and round.

  Fruit and vegetables have come back to life,

  but the startled birds haven't yet returned.

  At midnight I stand still and let my thoughts roam;

  with one glance they travel nine heavens.

  Since I tied my hair up as a teen, I've stuck to my own path.

  Now I'm already past forty.

  My body changed according to the law of nature,

  while my spirit house remained solitary and unused,

  true to its own inner nature.

  Jade and stone cannot match that firmness.

  I look up at the sky and recall the time of King Donghu,1

  when surplus food was left in the fields.

  With stomachs filled, people had no worries,

  rising in the morning, coming home at night to sleep.

  Since I was not born in such days,

  let me just water my own garden.

  from Twenty Poems on Drinking Wine

  Introduction

  I live a retired life with little joy,

  and worse, the nights are lengthening.

  Occasionally I get hold of some famous liquor,

  and I drink every evening,

  gazing at my shadow, soaking up what's in my cup.

  Without knowing it I get drunk again

  and since I'm already drunk,

  I often write a few lines to make myself happy.

  The sheets of inked paper have accumulated,

  never put together in any order,

  so I asked my friends to make a neat copy

  to let all of us have some fun.

  5

  I built my hut near people

  yet never hear carriage or horse.

  “How can that be?” you ask.

  Since my heart is a wilderness, the world fades.

  Gathering chrysanthemum by the east fence,

  my lazy eyes meet South Mountain.

  Mountain air is clean at twilight

  as birds soar homeward wing to wing.

  Beneath these things a revelation hides,

  but it dies on the tongue when I try to speak.

  9

  Early this morning I heard someone knock,

  and rushed to the door with my clothes upside down.

  I called out, “Who's there?”

  A kindhearted old farmer

  bringing me a pot of wine from far away.

  He thought I was not moving with the times.

  “To stand under thatched eaves in rags—

  that is not the high branch where you should nest.

  All the world is moving in the same direction.

  Please go with the muddy flow.”

  I was deeply touched by the villager's words,

  but by nature I'm in harmony with no one.

  Though it's true I can learn to turn my wagon around,

  won't I be lost if I act against my nature?

  Let's just enjoy this wine.

  My wagon will not turn around!

  14

  Old friends appreciate my pastime

  and come with a pot of wine.

  We sit on strewn rushes under a pine tree.

  A few rounds later we are drunk.

  Old people start babbling,

  confusing the toast order.

  When oblivious to your own existence,

  how can you know what things to value?

  If you are so long attached to things,

  how can you know the taste of wine is deep?

  Elegies

  (Three Poems)

  1

  There is life and there must be death.

  Early death does not mean life is rushing.

  Last night I still was a human being;

  this morning I'm in the book of ghosts.

  Where is the soul after its dispersal?

  Only my dry corpse is trusted to the coffin.

  Little sons are crying for their father,

  good friends touch me and weep.

  I will never again know gain, loss,

  or the right, wrong, of the human world.

  After a thousand autumns,

  who can tell glory from disgrace?

  I regret only one thing:

  I didn't drink enough when I had breath.

  2

  In the past I had no wine to drink;

  now the cup is filled in vain.

  Foam rises on the surface of spring wine.

  When can I taste it again?

  A table of food is laid out before me.

  Family and friends cry by my side.

  No sound comes when I try to speak.

  No light in my eyes when I try to look.

  I slept in a hall last night.

  Now I sleep in the country of weeds.

  One day I left my house,

  and on no day can I come back.

  3

  Wild grasses are vast and boundless

  and white poplars rustle in wind.

  Heavy frost comes in mid-October,

  when I am carried off to a far neighborhood.

  There is no one living around me,

  only tombs stand tall.

  Horses neigh up to the sky

  and wind is whining for me.

  After the dark chamber is closed,

  I won't see sun for thousands of years.

  No sun for thousands of years,

  and even a wise man can't help it.

  All the people who carried me here

  return now to their homes.

  Relatives may still have leftover sorrow,

  but others are already singing.

  Dead and gone, what can I say?

  I just trust my body to the mountains.

  1 Refers to the story of Han Xin in the “Historical Records” by Sima Qian. Han Xin was very poor when he was young. While he was fishing, an old woman washing clothes noticed his hunger and provided him with food. When Han Xin became the king of Chu, he looked for the old woman and gave her a thousand pieces of gold. After the old woman's death, he had her buried in a position in symmetry with that of his mother.

  1 Song refers to Chi Songzi (Red Pine), the legendary Rain Master who worked for the sage-king Shen Nong in ancient times, and Qiao refers to Wang Ziqiao, a prince who practiced on Song Mountain to become an immortal. Both of them supposedly achieved immortality.

  1 Donghu refers to Donghu Jizi, a legendary king who lived in ancient times. It is said that during his reign times were so good that food was in abundance and one could leave one's things lying about on the roadside and no one would bother them.

  SU XIAOXIAO

  (late fifth century)

  Su Xiaoxiao, also known as Su Xiaojun, came from Qiantang and was the sister of Su Pannu. She lived during the Southern Song dynasty, which was centered in Hangzhou in the Northern and Southern Dynasties Period of 420–589 (not to be confused with the later Southern Song dynasty 1127–1279). She was a well-known singing girl (courtesan), reputed to be beautiful, talented, and affectionate. Her poems
can be found in Flowers and Grass Selection (huacao cuibian), vol. II, as well as in Complete Song Lyric Songs (quan songci). Her poem “The Song of the West Tomb” became extremely famous and was the inspiration for many future poems. Su Xiaoxiao herself became the subject of many later literary works (see, for example, Li He's poem “Su Xiaoxiao's Tomb”). “The Song of the West Tomb” appears in a collection of Music Bureau poems (yuefu shiji) under the title of “Song of Su Xiaoxiao,” and though she is sometimes considered more of a literary character than a real historical figure, tombs associated with her are found by the West Lake in Hangzhou and elsewhere.

  Emotions on Being Apart

  Thousands of miles off, behind countless mountain passes,

  you make me grieve.

  Do you even know that?

  Since you left

  I've counted the leftover days in winter, waited out spring.

  Still not one word.

  All the flowers have bloomed

  and you are still gone.

  The Song of the West Tomb

  I ride in an oil-paper carriage,

  you ride a black steed.

  Where are we going to tie our heart knot?

  Under the cypress at the West Tomb.

  To the Tune of “Butterflies Adore Flowers”

  I live by the Qiantang River.

  Flowers fall, bloom again, but I don't care about flowing years.

  Swallows have carried spring off in their beaks.

  A few yellow plum blossoms shower my gauze window.

  With a slant unicorn comb in my half-loosened hair

  I gently play my hardwood clappers

  and sing about gold thread,