Bai Juyi's poems show an interest in recording both his times and his private life and often reveal an empathy with the poor that belies the heights of his own career. They are often written in a deliberately plain style, and some of his poetry is written in imitation of the folk songs collected by the Music Bureau (yuefu poems) in the second century bce. According to a popular account, Bai Juyi used to read his poems to an old peasant woman and changed any line that she couldn't understand. There is a benevolent directed intelligence in his poems that comes through the refractions of culture and translation and makes us feel the powerful presence of this poet who died more than a thousand years ago.
Assignment Under the Title
“Departure at Ancient Grass Field”**
Green and thick, weeds in the field.
Every year they wither and bloom.
Wildfire cannot destroy them;
they come back again with spring wind.
Distant grass invades ancient roads;
its sunny green links abandoned cities.
Now I'm seeing off my friend again.
The sorrow of parting is a field of rampant weeds.
Night Rain
Chirp of an early cricket. Silence.
The lamp dies then flares up again.
Night must be raining outside the window:
plink, plunk on the banana leaves.
Song of an Evening River
A ray of setting sun paves the water,
half the river is emerald, half the river ruby.
I love the third night in the ninth month—
dewdrops turn into pearls, the moon into a bow.
Lament for Peony Flowers
I grieve for the red peony flowers by the steps.
By this evening two branches have withered.
Tomorrow morning wind will blow away the rest.
At night I keep sad watch, hold flame over the dying red.
Buying Flowers
Spring's dusk comes to the imperial city.
Rattle, clatter, carriages and horses pass.
Everyone is saying, “It's peony season,”
and I follow them to buy flowers.
Expensive or cheap, there is no fixed cost,
prices shift with the number of blossoms.
Though a hundred red ones are like flames, flames,
even a small bouquet is worth five rolls of silk.
Canopies are used to cover the flowers
and bamboo frames protect them.
They are sprinkled and sealed with mud
so that, transplanted, their color doesn't change.
Every household follows this craze,
and no one wakes up from the addiction.
Now an old farmer
chances by the flower market,
lowers his head and sighs alone.
No one understands his sigh.
One cluster of deep-colored flowers
would pay the taxes of ten households.
Light Fur and Fat Horses
Arrogance fills the road
and shiny saddles light up the dust.
If you ask who these men are
you'll be told, “Officials close to the emperor.”
Those in red are ministers.
Those in purple are generals.
They are off to attend the army banquet
on horses like racing clouds.
Famous wine brims over the jugs.
They have countless delicacies from water and land.
Their fingers break open Tungting tangerines
and they eat fine fish filets from the Celestial Lake.
They feel so content when full
and their arrogance swells with the wine.
This year on the South bank of the Yangtze River there is drought.
In the State of Chu, people are eating people.
Watching the Reapers
Farmers have few slow months
and the fifth one is double busy.
Southern wind rises at night
and the wheat fields yellow.
Women carry food on shoulder,
kids bring water along.
They go together to feed their men
who are working at the South Hill
with feet burned by hot soil,
backs scorched by the bright and flaming sky.
But they are too exhausted to feel the heat
and don't want the long summer days to end.
There is a poor woman nearby,
carrying her son on her arm.
She gleans wheat ears with her right hand,
a broken basket hanging on her left elbow.
She looks up and tells me
a story that twists my heart:
all their harvest is gone to pay for the land rent.
She picks these ears to fill hungry stomachs.
What achievement, what virtue, have I
that I need not labor like a farmer?
I have an income of three hundred bushels,
and a surplus of food at the end of year.
I am ashamed, and these thoughts
nag at me for the rest of the day.
The Old Charcoal Seller
The old charcoal seller
chops wood and makes charcoal at South Mountain.
With a face full of dust and soot,
his hair is gray and his fingers all black.
How much can he make from selling charcoal?
Just enough to clothe his body and feed his mouth.
His clothes are very thin,
but he wishes it colder to keep charcoal prices high.
It snowed one foot outside the city during the night,
and he drove his charcoal cart through frozen ruts at dawn.
Now the sun is high, the ox is tired and the man hungry;
they take a rest in the mud outside the South Gate.
Who are those two men galloping near on horseback?
—messengers in white shirt and yellow gown.
They read a document in the name of the emperor
and turn the cart around, yell at the ox to head north.
A cartful of charcoal weighs about a ton,
but the palace messengers make the old man give it up
for just half a roll of red gauze and a piece of damask silk
they leave tied around the ox's head.
Song of Everlasting Sorrow**
The Chinese emperor longs for a beauty who could topple empires
but for many years he cannot find one in his country.
There is a girl from the Yang family just coming of age,
hidden deep in her chamber and no one knows about her.
It's hard to waste such natural beauty in anonymity,
and one morning she is chosen to be at the emperor's service.
She returns his gaze and a hundred charms rise from her smile,
making all the painted faces in the Six Palaces seem pale.
In chilly spring she is privileged to bathe in the Imperial Huaqing Spa.
Her skin like cream is cleansed in the slippery hot spring water.
She seems so coyly weak when maids help her to her feet;
this is when she first receives the emperor's favor,
with her cloudlike hair, flowerlike face, her gait that sways like gold.
They spend spring nights warm in a bed with lotus nets.
Since spring nights are so short and the sun soon rises high
the emperor neglects to attend morning court.
Never at rest, she attends and serves him at banquets
and spring outings and his every night belongs to her.
There are over three thousand beauties in the palace
but his love for three thousand is focused on her alone.
When her makeup is done in the golden chamber she serves him at night;
after banquet in the jade towers they sleep together drunk.
All her siblings are bestowed
with royal rank and land,
and she is admired for bringing honor to her family.
This changes the hearts of parents—
they want to give birth to girls instead of boys.
In a tall building rising into clouds on Li Mountain
her fairy music is carried everywhere by wind,
her unhurried songs and slow dances freezing strings and bamboo.
The emperor can never see her perform enough.
But suddenly military drums from Yuyang make the earth vibrate,
shattering her performance of “The Rainbow and Feather Garment.”
Smoke and dust rise from the nine city gates
as thousands of horsemen march northwest.
But their flapping green-pinion banners fall still;
the imperial column has only moved thirty miles out the west gate.
The six armies of imperial guards all refuse to move on
till the beauty with long moth-eyebrows twists and dies before their horses.
Her jewelry is scattered on the ground and no one picks up
her hairpieces of emerald, gold, and jade.
The emperor cannot save her. He just covers his face.
When he turns to look, tears and blood streak down together
and yellow dust spills everywhere in whistling wind
as they take the narrow zigzag mountain path up to Sword Pavilion.
Travelers are rare under Emei Mountain;
the flags and banners look blanched and the sun is thin.
The river and mountains in Sichuan are so green
that the emperor is lost in emotion each day and night.
In this temporary palace he sees a moon the color of heartbreak.
Through night rain he hears bells and the sound tears his guts.
The sky swirls and the sun orbits until the emperor returns in his Dragon Chariot
but he lingers here where she died and cannot move on.
In the mud on the Mawei slope,
he doesn't see her jade face, just the spot where she died.
The emperor and his ministers gaze at each other, clothes wet with tears.
Looking east to the capital's gate, they let the horses take them home.
The garden and ponds all look the same after his return,
the lotus flowers in Taiye Lake and willows in Weiyang Palace. The lotus flower and willow leaves remind him of her face and eyebrows.
How could he not shed tears at this sight
when spring wind comes on a peach-and-plum-blooming night,
or when it rains in autumn and the parasol tree leaves fall.
In the Western Palace and South Garden autumn weeds are rampant,
fallen leaves cover the steps and no one cleans up the dropped petals.
The royal drama troupe is starting to grow white hair
and the palace maids in the queen's quarters are getting old.
In the dusk palace fireflies trace his silent thoughts.
He picks at the lonely lamp till the wick's end and still cannot fall asleep.
Late and late come the bells and drums in these long nights.
Now the Celestial River clearly shines just before dawn.
Cold frost flakes are heavy on the mandarin-duck tiles.
The kingfisher quilt is cold and there is no one to share it with him.
Slowly so slowly a year passes since the final farewell,
but her ghost never visits in his dreams.
Yet a shaman from Linqiong, a visitor in the capital,
says absolute sincerity can reach the soul of the dead.
As the emperor is so obsessed with her,
it is arranged to let this necromancer search for her soul.
Flying in the sky, riding clouds fast like lightning,
he searches everywhere in heaven and earth,
looking everywhere in blue space and down in the Yellow Springs,1
but she is nowhere to be seen in these two vast places.
Suddenly he hears of a fairy mountain in the sea.
The mountain is invisible, hidden in a thin mist of nothingness,
with delicate towers and pavilions where five-colored clouds arise.
Through blurred vision one seems to see many goddesses moving there.
One of them is named Taizhen;
her creamy skin and flowery face resemble Yang.
A gold gate to the west chamber and a knock on the jade door,
and the word is passed from one maid to another
that a messenger from the Han's emperor is here,
interrupting her dream in her nine-flower canopied bed.
Grabbing her clothes and pushing away her cushions,
she sits up. Pearl curtains and silver screens open one after another.
Her cloud-hair tilts to one side as she has just gotten up,
and she races down the hall half undressed,
wind puffing up her long loose sleeves,
recalling her dance to “The Rainbow and Feather Garment.”
Her jade face looks lonely and her tears are not yet dry.
She looks like a branch of pear flowers in spring rain.
With love in her gaze she thanks the emperor,
“After our parting we haven't seen or heard each other.
Yellow Springs is the land of the dead.
Our love came to an end in Zhaoyang Palace.
Here in the fairy Penglai Palace, the sun and the moon are long.
I look back and look down at the human world,
unable to see the capital, just dust and mist.
The only way is to use old souvenirs to express deep feelings.
I'll send a lacquered box and gold hairpin to you
and save one prong of the hairpin and one panel of the box,
snapping the decorated panel and hairpin in two.
Just make your determination as firm as the gold,
we will have a chance to meet in the human world or in heaven.”
Before the shaman departed she asked him to take a message
with vows that only the emperor and she knew.
It was said on the seventh day of the seventh month in Longevity Hall
they had said to each other in private at midnight:
“In the sky let's fly as birds sharing wings,2
and on earth let's be trees with trunks growing as one.”
Though heaven and earth are long, they will cease at last,
but this regret stretches on and on forever.
Song of the Lute
In the tenth year of the Yuanhe Period [815], I was demoted to deputy governor and exiled to Jiujiang. In autumn the next year, I was seeing a friend off at the Penpu ferry when I heard through the night someone playing lute in a boat. The tune, crisp and metallic, carried the flavor of the music of the capital. I asked her who she was, and she told me she was a prostitute from the capital, Changan, and had learned to play lute from Master Mu and Master Cao. Now she was old and her beauty had declined and therefore she had married a merchant. So I ordered wine and asked her to play several tunes. We fell silent for a while. Then she told me about the pleasure of her youth, though now she is low and withered, drifting about on rivers and lakes. I had been assigned to posts outside the capital for two years and had enjoyed myself in peace. But touched by her words, that evening I began to realize what I truly felt about being exiled. So I wrote this long poem for her with a total of 612 characters, entitled “Song of the Lute.”
Seeing off a guest at night by the Xunyang River,
I felt autumn shivering on maple leaves and reed flowers.
I dismounted from my horse and my guest stepped on the boat;
we raised our cups for a drink without the music of pipes or strings.
We got drunk but not happy, mourning his departure.
When he embarked, the moon was half drowned in the river.
Suddenly we heard a lute sing across the water
&
nbsp; and the host forgot to return home, and the guest stopped his boat.
Following the sound we softly inquired who the musician was,
the lute fell silent and the answer came after a pause.
We steered our boat close and invited her to join us,
with wine refilled and lamp relit, our banquet opened again.
It took a thousand pleases and ten thousand invitations before she appeared,
though with her lute she still hid half her face.
She plucked a few times to tune her strings.
Even before the melody formed one felt her emotion.
Each string sounded muted and each note meditative,
as if the music were narrating the sorrows of her life.
With eyebrows lowered she let her hands freely strum on and on,
pouring pent-up feelings out of her heart.
Softly strumming, plucking, sweeping, and twanging the strings,
she played “Rainbow Garment” then “Green Waist.”
The thick strings splattered like a rain shower,
the thin strings whispered privately like lovers,
splattering and whispering back and forth,
big pearls and small pearls dropping into a jade plate.
Smooth, the notes were skylarks chirping under flowers.
Uneven, the sound flowed like a spring under ice,
the spring water cold and strained, the strings congealing silence,
freezing to silence, till the sounds couldn't pass, and were momentarily at rest.
Now some other hidden sorrow and dark regret arose
and at this moment silence was better than sound.
Suddenly a silver vase exploded and the water splashed out,
iron horses galloped through and swords and spears clashed.
When the tune stopped, she struck the heart of the instrument,
all four strings together, like a piece of silk tearing.
Silence then in the east boat and the west.
All I could see in the river's heart was the autumn moon, so pale.
The Anchor Book of Chinese Poetry Page 21