The Anchor Book of Chinese Poetry

by Tony Barnstone

  Why even mention the shabby old days?

  This morning I roll free, my thoughts boundless.

  Spring wind is joy below my fast horse's hooves

  as I race to see all Changan's flowers in just one day.

  1 See The Art of Writing: Teachings of the Chinese Masters (Boston: Sham-bhala Publications, Inc., 1996), translated, edited, and with introductions by Tony Barnstone and Chou Ping, pp. 75–76.

  LADY LIU

  (mid-eighth century)

  Lady Liu, according to the Tang story “Biography of Lady Liu,” was a concubine of a rich man, Mr. Li, who was a good friend to Han Hong, who was then a poor scholar but was later recognized as one of the ten talented men of letters in the Dali Reign (he passed the national imperial civil examination in 754). Liu secretly admired Han Hong. When Mr. Li found out, he married her to Han. During the An Lushan Rebellion, Liu protected herself by hiding in the Faling Temple and cutting her hair to make herself look ugly. When peace was restored, Han sent people to look for her and sent her a poem. She replied with the lines that appear below. Eventually they were reunited and their story became widely known—recorded not only in Taiping Records (taiping guangji), vol. 485, but also in Meng Qi's Narrative Poems: Emotions (benshi shi: qinggan), though the two versions of the story are slightly different.

  To the Tune of “Yangliuzhi”**

  See the willow twigs

  in flowering season:

  what a shame each year the twigs are broken as a parting gift.

  One leaf releases to wind, suddenly signaling autumn.

  Even if you come back this twig is too old to be snapped.

  * Han's poem, to which Liu's poem was a response, goes as follows:

  Willows at the Zhang Platform,

  willows at the Zhang Platform,

  is the old green spring still there?

  Even if the long twigs still hang like in the past,

  they must already be snapped by other hands.

  ZHANG JI

  (mid-eighth century)

  Zhang Ji was a scholar-poet from Xianzhou who passed the imperial examinations in 753 and held a number of regional and central government posts. His forty-odd poems are not well known, and he is not considered a leading poet of the Tang dynasty, but his short poem “Moored by the Maple Bridge at Night” is extremely popular.

  Moored by the Maple Bridge at Night

  The moon sets, ravens crow, and frost fills the sky.

  River maples, fishermen's lanterns. I face sorrow in my sleep.

  The Hanshan Temple is outside Gusu City.

  At midnight the bell rings—the sound rocks my traveler's boat.

  HAN YU

  (768–824)

  Han Yu was born in Nanyang, Henan province, to a literary family. He is among China's finest prose writers, second only to Sima Qian, and first among the “Eight Great Prose Masters of the Tang and Song.” His father died when he was two, and he was raised in the family of his older brother, Han Hui. He taught himself to read and write and was a student of philosophical writings and Confucian thought. His family moved to Changan in 774 but was banished to Southern China in 777 because of their association with disgraced minister Yuan Zai. Han Hui died in 781, leaving the family in poverty; they returned north around 784. In 792, after four attempts, Han Yu passed the imperial exam (jin shi). A few years later he went into the service of the military governor of Bianzhou, and then of the military governor of Xuzhou. Finally, in 802, he obtained a post as instructor at the Imperial University, a job that he held periodically between other postings and several periods of exile; ultimately he was made rector of the university. After a number of other distinguished government posts, he died at the age of fifty-six in Changan.

  Han Yu was a Confucian thinker and was deeply opposed to Buddhism, a religion that was then popular in the court. As scholar Liu Wu-chi notes, he came close to being executed in 819 for sending a letter to the emperor in which he denounced “the elaborate preparations being made by the state to receive the Buddha's fingerbone, which he called ‘a filthy object' and which he said should be ‘handed over to the proper officials for destruction by water and fire to eradicate forever its origin.'”1 He believed that literature and ethics were intertwined, and he led a revolution in prose style against the formal ornamentation then popular, championing instead gu wen (old style prose), which was characterized by simplicity, logic, and an emphasis on apt and exact expression. He was at the center of a group of prose writers who adopted this style, a group that included Ouyang Xiu and Su Shi (Su Dongpo) as well as Meng Jiao, whose poetry Han Yu appreciated. While Han Yu's lasting reputation lies as a prose innovator, he was also a fine poet.

  Mountain Rocks

  Ragged mountain rocks efface the path.

  Twilight comes to the temple where bats hover.

  Outside the hall I sit on steps and gaze at torrential new rain.

  Banana leaves are wide, the cape jasmine is fat.

  A monk tells me the ancient Buddhist frescoes are good

  and holds a torch to show me, but I can barely see.

  I lie quiet in night so deep even insects are hushed.

  From behind a rise the clear moon enters my door.

  In the dawn I am alone and lose myself,

  wandering up and down in mountain mist.

  The colors dazzle me: mountain red, green stream,

  and a pine so big ten people linking hands can't encircle it.

  Bare feet on slick rock as I wade upstream.

  Water sounds—shhhh, shhhh. Wind inflates my shirt.

  A life like this is the best.

  Why put your teeth on the bit, why let people rein you in?

  O friends,

  how can we grow old without returning here?

  Losing My Teeth**

  Last year a tooth dropped,

  this year another one,

  then six or seven went fast

  and the falling is not going to stop.

  All the rest are loose

  and it will end when they are all gone.

  I remember when I lost the first

  I felt ashamed of the gap.

  When two or three followed,

  I worried about death.

  When one is about to come loose,

  I am anxious and fearful

  since forked teeth are awkward with food,

  and in dread I tilt my face to rinse my mouth.

  Eventually it will abandon me and drop

  just like a landslide.

  By now the falling out is old hat,

  each tooth goes just like the others.

  Fortunately I have about twenty left.

  One by one they will go in order.

  If one goes each year,

  I have enough to last two decades.

  Actually it does not make much difference

  if they go together or separately.

  People say when teeth fall out

  your life is fading.

  I say life has its own end;

  long life, short life, we all die.

  People speak of the gaps in my teeth,

  and all gaze at me in shock.

  I quote Zhuangzi's story—

  a tree and a wild goose each has its advantages,

  and though silence is better than slurring my words

  and though I can't chew, at least soft food tastes great

  and I can sing out this poem

  to surprise my wife and kids.

  Listening to Yinshi Play His Instrument

  Softly lovers whisper to each other,

  pouring out affection and complaints.

  Suddenly the tune becomes daring,

  heroes marching to the battlefield.

  Floating clouds and willow catkins have no roots;

  between heaven and earth they float.

  Hundreds of birds chirp and call together

  —suddenly only the phoenix is heard.

  Now climbing up even one
inch is hard,

  but then it waterfalls thousands of yards.

  I sigh that though I have two ears

  they do not understand music.

  When you started to play

  I couldn't sit or stand still by your side.

  I raised my two hands to stop you,

  my tears wetting my clothes.

  You are a master at this instrument, Yin.

  Please don't fill my guts with ice and fire.

  Poem to Commander Zhang at the

  Meeting of the Bian and Si Rivers

  Two rivers meet at this corner of the city

  where a one-thousand-step polo field is smooth as if planed

  and a low wall stretches around three sides.

  Drums clatter when red flags are raised.

  Before sunrise on a chill early autumn morning,

  why are you all dressed up like this?

  It's been agreed, teams will be chosen to fight for the win.

  A hundred horses draw in their hooves while brushing by each other.

  The ball surprises and players gather and disperse with frantic sticks.

  There are red pommels made of dyed ox hair and gold bridles.

  A player turns aside and reaches over close to the horse belly,

  a thunder rolls from his hand and the magic ball runs.

  Players retreat and relax on both sides,

  but suddenly things shift and they fight again.

  The serve is hard, but the receiver is more skillful, such rude strength!

  Cheers cascade from the surrounding crowd as strong men shout.

  This is, of course, for military training, not for fun,

  different than sitting calmly moving pieces on a map,

  but these days it is hard to find loyal officers,

  so please rein in your horses and fight real enemies.

  1 Liu Wu-chi, An Introduction to Chinese Literature (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1973), p. 126.

  * Written in 803 when Han Yu was thirty-six years old. Zhuangzi tells the story of how he met a woodsman in the mountains who chose not to cut down a tree whose wood was useless. Afterward he visited a friend who wanted to slaughter for him one of his two geese, one of which could sing and one of which could not; he killed the one who didn't greet his guest. His student asked Zhuangzi, “That tree because it's useless was able to survive, but the goose because it couldn't sing was slaughtered. What do you think about that?” Zhuangzi answered, “I stand between the two,” meaning you shouldn't be too useful and shouldn't be too useless.

  XUE TAO

  (768–831)

  Xue Tao was a well-respected Tang dynasty poet. She was born either in the Tang capital, Changan, or in Chengdu in present-day Sichuan province, where her father, a minor government official, was posted. A story about her childhood, perhaps apocryphal, suggests that she was able to write complex poems by the age of seven or eight. She may have gained some literary education from her father, but he died before she reached marriageable age. She ended up being a very successful courtesan, one of the few paths for women in Tang dynasty China that encouraged conversation and artistic talent. After the military governor, Wei Gao, became her literary patron, her reputation spread. She is said to have had an affair with another famous literary figure, Yuan Zhen. Late in life she went to live in seclusion and put on the habit of a Daoist churchwoman. More than one hundred of her poems survive. She is often considered (with Yu Xuanji) one of the two finest female poets of the Tang dynasty.

  Seeing a Friend Off

  In water lands, night frost on reeds,

  a cold moon the color of the mountains.

  Who says our thousand-mile separation starts tonight?

  My dream can travel to the farthest border pass.

  Sending Old Poems to Yuan Zhen

  Everyone writes poems in their own manner

  but only I know delicacy of wind and light.

  When writing of flowers in moonlight, I lean toward the dark.

  Of a willow in rainy dawn I write how twigs hang down.

  They say green jade should stay hidden deep,

  but I write candidly on red-lined paper.

  I'm old now but can't stop writing,

  so I open myself to you as if I were a good man.

  A Spring in Autumn

  Behind a ribbon of evening mist, a chill sky distills,

  and a melody of far waterfalls like ten silk strings

  comes to my pillow to tug feelings,

  keeping me sleepless in sorrow past midnight.

  Spring Gazing

  (Four Poems)

  1

  Willows are green, green and the river water flat.

  I hear a man on the river singing me songs

  and see sun on my east, rain to my west.

  The sun is shying off, but I feel his shine.1

  Flowers bloom but we can't share them.

  Flowers fall and we can't share our sadness.

  If you need to find when I miss you most:

  when the flowers bloom and when they fall.

  2

  I pull a blade of grass and tie a heart-shaped knot

  to send to the one who understands my music.

  Spring sorrow is at the breaking point.

  Again spring birds murmur sad songs.

  3

  Wind, flowers, and the day is aging.

  No one knows when we'll be together.

  If I can't tie my heart to my man's,

  it's useless to keep tying heart-shaped knots.

  4

  Unbearable when flowers fill the branches,

  when two people miss each other.

  Tears streak my morning mirror like jade chopsticks.

  Does the spring wind know that?

  Willow Catkins

  In February, light, fine willow catkins

  play with people's clothes in spring breeze;

  they are heartless creatures,

  flying south one moment, then north again.

  Hearing Cicadas

  Washed clean by dew, cicada songs go far

  and like windblown leaves piling up

  each cicada's cry blends into the next.

  Yet each lives on its own branch

  Moon

  Its spirit leans like a thin hook

  or opens round like a Han-loom fan,

  slender shadow whose nature is to be full,

  seen everywhere in the human world.

  1 The last line literally means: “If you say there is no sunshine, yet sunshine there is,” but the word for sunshine, qing, and the word for love, qing, sound the same, creating a double entendre here. Of course, this is one of those delightful, impossible translation problems. We did our best to include a similar punning homophone with “shying” and “shine.”

  LIU YUXI

  (772–842)

  Liu Yuxi came from Luoyang in Henan province. An official who passed the highest imperial examinations when he was twenty, he worked alongside the poet Liu Zongyuan. Demoted for political reasons, he was sent to work for nine years in a minor position in Langzhou in Hunan province. Recalled to the capital, he continued to have political problems, offending officials with his satirical writing and finding himself again exiled to various postings around the country, though he ended his life working in a good position as president of the Board of Rites. An important poet in his day, Lui Yuxi showed an interest in adapting folk songs to poetry (as in the “Bamboo Branch Song” included in this collection) and wrote very strong political poems. His repeated exile was a direct result of the political views evinced in his poetry.

  Mooring at Niuzhu at Dusk

  When evening wind rises from reeds,

  the autumn river is scaled like a fish.

  Leftover sunset clouds suddenly shift color

  and songs echo after wild geese roam off.

  When military drums are no longer heard

  a fisherman's lamps are bright.

&nb
sp; No one knows what to say about history.

  I walk alone in moonlight.

  Bamboo Branch Song

  Black-Uniform Lane

  Wild grass blossoms by the Red-Bird Bridge.

  Sun sets at the open end of Black-Uniform Lane.

  The old swallows who built nests under the prime minister's eaves

  now fly into the households of common folk.

  Looking at Dongting Lake

  Lake light and autumn moonlight in harmony;

  the calm lake surface is an unpolished metal mirror.

  From afar the green mountain by Dongting Lake

  is a green field-snail on a silver plate.

  BAI JUYI

  (772–846)

  Bai Juyi was born in Henan to a poor family of scholars. He took the imperial exam at age twenty-seven and dreamed, with his friend Yuan Zhen, of being a reformer. However, his career as an official was less than illustrious, and his attempts to criticize incidents of injustice only caused him to be banished from the capital (Changan) in 815. He was the prefect of Hangzhou (822–825) and then of Suzhou (825–827) but eventually retired from political life, which he found to be a disappointment. He turned to Buddhism and fared somewhat better as a writer than as a politician. He was popular in his lifetime, both in China, where his poems were known by peasants and court ladies alike, and in Japan, where a number of his poems found their way into The Tale of Genji and where he was the subject of a Noh play and became a sort of Shinto deity. More than twenty-eight hundred of his poems survive, as he was careful to preserve his work; in 815 he sent his writings to Yuan Zhen, who edited and compiled them into an edition of his collected work in 824–825.