The Anchor Book of Chinese Poetry

by Tony Barnstone

  Wu Ke's original surname was Jia. He became a monk at an early age and was the cousin of the poet Jia Dao, whose monk name was Wu Ben (they had the same grandfather on the father's side). Born in Juo County, Hebei province, Wu Ke lived as a monk with Jia Dao in the Green Dragon Temple in the capital. He was friend to many poets. His own poetry is written mostly in five-character lines, and he is known for his ability to describe things without explicitly naming what he is describing. For example, in the first of the lines “I listened to rain till the last night drum ceased/and opened my door to find fallen leaves deep,” Wu Ke is describing not the rain but the sound of falling leaves. His poems are found in the Complete Tang Poems (quan tangshi).

  To Cousin Jia Dao in Autumn

  Dark insects noisy at dusk

  as I sat in meditation in the West Woods.

  I listened to rain till the last night drum ceased

  and opened my door to find fallen leaves deep.

  Because we used to suffer from the illness of ambition1

  we turned our minds to Dongting Lake.

  This same old business in the capital

  still keeps you far away.

  JIA DAO

  (778–841)

  Jia Dao was a Buddhist monk who gave up the monk's life around 810 after meeting the poet Han Yu and moving to the capital, Changan. Along with Zhang Ji and Meng Jiao, Jia Dao followed the aesthetic principles advocated by Han Yu, who celebrated the didactic and moral effects of literature and presented the poet as an honest Confucian rectifier of societal wrongs. With the encouragement of Han Yu, he tried to pass the imperial examination but failed repeatedly. Although he was not a successful official, he gained a strong reputation as a poet. Here is a famous story about the first meeting of Jia Dao and Han Yu, from the compilation of poetic anecdotes titled Notes of Xiang Su:

  1 The illness of ambition refers to Jia Dao's continuous efforts to pass the national imperial exam, which he failed many times. Even after passing it he was assigned only a very minor position. Supposedly he and his cousin discussed the possibility of living a hermit's life, like that of a fisherman on Dongting Lake. When the monk Jia Dao came to Luoyang, monks were forbidden to leave the monastery after noon. Jia Dao wrote a sad poem about this and Han Yu liked the poem so much he helped him get permission to become a layman.

  When he was concentrating on his poems he would often run into important people without being aware of it. One day, riding his donkey, he was thinking about these lines: “Birds return to their nests in trees by the pond./A monk is knocking at a door by moonlight.”

  He couldn't decide whether to replace the word “knocking” with “pushing,” so he was making wild gestures on his donkey, acting out first a knock and then a push. While doing this he encountered the procession of the mayor, Han Yu, and neglected to give way. Arrested by the bodyguards, and brought before Han Yu, he was asked to explain his actions. He explained how he was trying to decide between these two words. Han Yu considered this for a long time, and said, at last, “knocking” is better. They became fast friends after that.

  The great Song dynasty poet and statesman Ouyang Xiu admired Jia Dao's intense evocations of hardship: “Like Meng Jiao, Jia Dao was a poor poet until his death and liked to write lines reflecting his hard life…. He writes: ‘I have white silk in my sideburns/but cannot use it to weave a warm shirt.' Even if one could weave hair, it wouldn't do him much good. Jia Dao also has a poem ‘Morning Hunger' with these lines: ‘I sit and hear the zither on the western bed:/two or three strings snapping in the cold.' People say that this poem shows that hunger as well as cold is unbearable.”1

  Looking for the Hermit and Not Finding Him

  Beneath a pine I question a boy.

  He says, “Master has gone to gather herbs

  somewhere on the mountain

  but who knows where? The clouds are deep.”

  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. 62–63, 75–76.

  YUAN ZHEN

  (779–831)

  Known as Yuan the Genius, Yuan Zhen was among the most brilliant poets and statesmen of the Tang dynasty. He was born in Changan to a family descended from the royal house that ruled Northern China in the fifth and sixth centuries during the Northern Wei dynasty. Though his father died when he was a child, he became a brilliant scholar under his mother's tutoring. He passed the examinations in the category of “clarification of the classics” when he was fourteen, and when he was twenty-four he passed the “highly selective” examination, which landed him an appointment in the imperial library with Bai Juyi, the poet who was to be his lifelong friend. Several years later he took the final palace examination, monitored by the emperor, and gained the highest score, resulting in a position close to the emperor. Like his friend Bai, Yuan dreamed of being a reformer, a dream that was to result in a series of banishments. He did, however, help to create “The New Music Bureau Songs Movement,” which attempted to recapture the formal freedoms and the simplicity of diction of the Music Bureau (yuefu) form of the Han dynasty and to use poetry for the serious ends of social reform.

  When Told Bai Juyi Was Demoted and Sent to Jiangzhou

  A dying lamp's low flame tosses the shadows.

  This evening, told you've been demoted to Jiangzhou,

  I am so startled I sit up in my final sickbed.

  Dark wind is blowing rain into cold windows.

  Late Spring

  Calm day through the thin curtain, swallows talking fast.

  Pairs of fighting sparrows kick up dust on the steps.

  Wind at dusk, a brushwood gate swings shut.

  Flowers drop their last petals. No one notices.

  Petals Falling in the River

  At sunset the Jialing River flows east

  and thousands of pear petals chase the river wind.

  What twists my stomach as I watch the river flowers?

  Half have fallen in the river, half drift on the air.

  from Missing Her After Separation

  2

  A mountain spring randomly flows over the steps:

  a small house among thousands of peach flowers.

  Before getting up, I leaf through a Daoist book

  and watch her combing her hair under the crystal curtain.

  LIU CAICHUN

  (late eighth-early ninth centuries)

  Liu Caichun, a native of Zhejiang, was a well-known Tang dynasty courtesan. Though she was a singing girl, she was married to the actor Zhou Jinan. Between 823 and 829 she visited Yuezhou and became a friend of Yuan Zhen, the well-known Tang poet. Their friendship was recorded in a book entitled Cloud Brook Friend Discussions, (yunxi youyi). Six of her poems are included in the Complete Tang Poems (quan tangshi).

  Song of Luogen

  (Three Poems)

  1

  Don't be the wife of a merchant.

  He'll use your gold hairpins as divination coins.

  Every morning I look at the river mouth,

  and over and over run to greet the wrong boat.

  2

  I don't like the Qin and Huai Rivers.

  I hate the boats running on the water.

  They carried away my husband.

  It's already a year, and then another year.

  3

  That year on the day you left

  I thought you went to Tonglu

  but no one could find you there at Tonglu.

  Today I got your letter—from Canton!

  LI HE

  (791–817)

  Distantly related to the imperial clan and extremely talented, Li He was nevertheless an unsuccessful scholar who attained only the lowest posts in his brief life (he died at the age of twenty-six). His poetry, like that of Meng Jiao, can be bitterly sarcastic and reflects the frustration he must have felt in his career. In his fifth “Horse Poem,” for example, he compares him
self to a fine desert horse without an appropriate rider, which longs to be harnessed and directed by imperial (golden) reins. He also has a penchant for erotic, romantic, and even morbidly violent imagery, and his poems grate against the nerves with the shrieking of ghosts, the weeping of flowers, and the burning of sinister fires. He was something of a Chinese Edgar Allan Poe, though a much better poet than Poe was, and like Poe his reputation suffered because literary culture couldn't stomach his unclassifiable works of genius. Sponsored in his day by the prominent poet and prose writer Han Yu, Li He quickly disappeared from literary consciousness after his death, making a comeback only in the last two centuries. Two hundred forty of his poems have survived centuries of neglect, though legend states that what remains was part of a larger collection that was thrown into a toilet by his vindictive cousin.

  from Twenty-three Horse Poems

  4

  This horse is no ordinary horse.

  It is celestial like the Horse Constellation.

  Walk up and tap its thin bones

  and they'll sing like bronze.

  5

  The great desert of sand is snow and the

  Yen Mountain moon is a hook.

  When will I be harnessed with golden reins,

  galloping clear autumn beneath my hooves?

  Shown to My Younger Brother**

  After three years away from you,

  I'm back at last for one day, and more.

  We drink green Luling wine this evening

  and I see yellow cloth-wrapped books, like when I left.

  My sick bones still exist,

  so nothing is impossible in this world!

  Why bother to plead with the cows-and-horses dice,1

  just throw and let them roll!

  from Speaking My Emotions

  2

  All day writing, I stopped at dusk,

  startled by my own frosty hair.

  I laughed at myself in the mirror.

  Is this the way to live as long as South Mountain?

  I have no wrapping on my head

  and my clothes are cheaply dyed with bitter bark.

  Just look at the fish in the clear brook;

  they drink and swim, pleased with themselves.

  Flying Light**

  Flying light, flying light—

  I urge you to drink a cup of wine.

  I do not know the height of blue heaven

  or the extent of yellow earth.

  I only sense the moon's cold,

  sun's burn, sear us.

  Eat bear, and you'll grow fat;

  eat frog, and you'll waste away.

  Where is the Spirit Lady?

  And where the Great Unity?

  East of the sky is the Ruo tree:

  underneath, a dragon, torch in mouth.

  I will cut off the dragon's feet

  and chew the dragon's flesh:

  then morning will never return

  and evening cannot bend.

  Old men will not die

  nor young men weep.

  Why then swallow yellow gold

  or gulp down white jade?

  Who is Ren Hungzi,

  riding a white ass through the clouds?

  Liu Che, in Maoling tomb, is just a heap of bones.

  And Ying Zheng rots in his catalpa coffin,

  wasting all that abalone.

  Translated by Arthur Sze

  from Thirteen South Garden Poems

  13

  Among the saplings, a path revealed at dawn,

  long grass blades wet from night mist.

  Like a snowy river mouth the willow catkins amaze.

  A wheat season rain swells brooks and field.

  Sparse bells echo from an ancient temple.

  Broken moon hung over a far mountain.

  On a sandbank someone strikes stones to make a fire.

  Burning bamboo lights up fishing boats.

  Su Xiaoxiao's Tomb**

  Dew on lonely orchids

  like eyes brimming tears.

  I find nothing to tie her a heart-shaped knot.

  I can't bear to cut the misty flowers.

  Grass is her soft green cushion,

  pines are her parasol.

  She wears the wind,

  and water tinkles her jade pendants.

  In her lacquered carriage

  she waits in the evening

  while like a cold emerald candle

  a will-o'-the-wisp sparkles

  and under the Western Tomb

  wind blows the rain.

  Song of Goose Gate Governor

  Black clouds press the city till it's almost crushed,

  and our armor reflects moonlight on shifting metal fish scales.

  The sound of horns fills the sky with autumn colors.

  Night congeals purple on the fortress like rouge.

  With half-furled scarlet banners we approach the Yi River

  and in heavy frost our cold drums seem muted.

  To live up to the king's expectation on Yellow Gold Tower,1

  we will wave our jade-dragon swords and die.

  Under the City Wall at Pingcheng

  Hungry and cold under the Pingcheng City wall,

  every night we guard the bright moon

  but our parting-gift swords have lost their gloss

  and sea wind breaks our hair.

  This long fortress extends into white space.

  We see Chinese flags red in the distance,

  hear short flutes from their black tents.

  Mist and smoke soak their dragon banners.

  Standing on the city wall at dusk,

  we see things blurred under the wall.

  Wind throws withered bitter fleabane about,

  and our thin horses neigh inside the city.

  Please tell us, officer in charge of wall construction,

  how many thousand miles are we from the pass?

  Our one worry: will our bundled corpses be sent home?

  We're ready to turn our halberds on ourselves.1

  Song of an Old Man's Jade Rush

  Jade rush, jade rush! A man needs to find emerald jade

  to be made in vain for love of beauties into hairpins that quiver at

  each step.

  The old man is so starved and cold even the water dragon is worried.

  The waters and air of Blue Brook can never be clear again.

  Night rain on the hills where the old man munches hazelnuts,

  the cuckoo sings till its beak drips blood like an old man's tears.

  The water in the Blue Brook loathes living men

  and men still hate these waters a thousand years after their deaths.

  Slant mountains, cypress wind, and howling rain,

  and he dives to the bottom of the spring, a rope tied to his foot

  dangling in the green. Thinking of his cold village of white huts he misses his fragile babies

  by an ancient terrace where stone steps are scattered with hanging

  guts grass.2

  A Piece for Magic Strings

  (A Shamaness Exorcizes Baleful Creatures)

  On the western hills the sun sets, the eastern hills darken,

  Horses blown by the whirlwind tread the clouds.

  From colored lute and plain pipes, crowded faint notes:

  Her flowered skirt rustles as she steps in the autumn dust.

  When the wind brushes the cassia leaves and a cassia seed drops

  The blue raccoon weeps blood and the cold fox dies.

  Dragons painted on the ancient wall with tails of inlaid gold

  The god of rain rides into the autumn pool;

  And the owl a hundred years old, which changed to a goblin of

  the trees,

  Hears the sound of laughter as green flames start up inside its nest.

  Translated by A. C. Graham

  An Arrowhead from the

  Ancient Battlefield of Changping

  Lacquer du
st and powdered bone and red cinnabar grains:

  From the spurt of ancient blood the bronze has flowered.

  White feathers and gilt shaft have melted away in the rain,

  Leaving only this triple-cornered broken wolf's tooth.

  I was searching the plain, riding with two horses,

  In the stony fields east of the post station, on a bank where

  bamboos sprouted,

  After long winds and brief daylight, beneath the dreary stars,

  Damped by a black flag of cloud that hung in the empty night.

  To left and right, in the air, in the earth, ghosts shrieked from

  wasted flesh.

  The curds drained from my upturned jar, mutton victuals were my

  sacrifice.

  Insects settled, the wild geese swooned, the buds were blight-

  reddened on the reeds,

  The whirlwind was my escort, puffing sinister fires.

  In tears, seeker of ancient things, I picked up this broken barb

  With snapped point and russet flaws, which once pierced through

  flesh.

  In the east quarter on South Street a peddler on horseback

  Talked me into bartering the metal for a votive basket.

  Translated by A. C. Graham

  A Sky Dream

  The old rabbit and the cold toad1are weeping sky color