The Anchor Book of Chinese Poetry
Page 28
and easily drops into grief.
She almost sings, but stops herself.
She almost smiles, then knits her brows.
It's enough to tear your heart.
Walking Back in Moonlight from Bohdi Trees to the Guanghua Temple
Sound of a spring waterfalling down rocks.
Silent mountain deep in night.
Bright moon washes the pine woods clean.
A thousand peaks, all one color.
Encouraging Myself
Watering flowers is always a pleasure.
I can't wait for spring color in Zhenyang.
Officials are moved around like relay messengers,
but at least for three years I've been master of this place.
To the Tune of “Butterflies Adore Flowers”
Falling petals swirl in wind against my face.
The willows are dense, the mist is deep,
and snow-white catkins shift and float.
After rain a light chill remains
like spring sorrow and this melancholy hangover.
The bed-screen mountains circle my pillow like green waves.
On my emerald quilt with ornamented lamps
I am alone night after night.
Lonely, I rise and lift the embroidered curtain
to a dazzling moon, pear blossoms glowing.
To the Tune of “Mulberry-Picking Song”
Ten years ago I used to indulge in cups of wine
under a white moon, in clear wind,
but cares have withered me,
and age has come with startling speed.
Hair at my temples has changed color, but my heart is the same.
I grasp a golden goblet
and listen again to old tunes,
familiar, that carry me into old days, drunk.
Poem in the Jueju Form **
Cold rain swells the Jiaopi Pool.
No one on the solitary mountain slope.
Just before the frost comes, the flowers
facing the high pavilion seem so bright.
1 Your letters (“fish”) can't reach me across this distance.
* This poem was written in 1072, just before Ouyang Xiu's death. The jueju form is a four-line rhyming poem in either five or seven characters.
WANG ANSHI
(102.1–1086)
Wang Anshi was born to a modest family with a history of government service. Although he started out as a provincial official, under the Emperor Shenzong (reigned 1067–1085) he became the most important politician of his time, a reformer who sought to regulate many aspects of Northern Song culture, from education to the military. When the conservative forces in the government opposed his reforms, he fell from favor and resigned. He was a protégé of Ouyang Xiu, who praised his work. Like Ouyang, he saw literature in the Confucian tradition of promoting moral and social improvements. His collected poems number above one thousand five hundred, and a number of his prose pieces also survive. He is known for the simplicity and clarity of his poems, especially those written in the regulated verse form, and as one of the “Eight Masters of Song and Tang Dynasty Prose.”
Plum Blossoms
Where the wall turns, several branches of plum flowers
unfold blossoms on their own against the cold.
From afar I know they are not snow
as an invisible fragrance spreads.
Late Spring, a Poem Improvised at Banshan
Spring wind took flowers away.
It paid me back with clear shade.
Dark flourishing trees quiet the road on the slope.
The garden house is deep behind waves of branches.
I take short rests when the seat is set up,
with a walking stick and sandals I look for hidden scenes
but see only Northern Mountain birds
passing by and leaving a sweet sound behind.
SU SHI (SU DONGPO)
(1036–1101)
Su Shi was born in Meishan in Sichuan province to an illustrious family of officials and distinguished scholars. He and his brother and father—the Three Su's—were considered among the finest prose masters of both the Tang and Song dynasties. Su Shi took the imperial exam in 1057 and was noticed by the powerful tastemaker, politician, poet, and chief examiner Ouyang Xiu, who became his patron. Like Ouyang, Su Shi was a Renaissance man who, in addition to having a political career, was an innovator and master of poetry, prose, calligraphy, and painting.
Among the founders of the Southern Song style of painting, Su Shi felt that poems and paintings should be as spontaneous as running water, yet rooted in an objective rendering of emotions in the world. Around 2,400 of his poems in the shi form survive, along with 350 ci form poems. Like Ouyang, Su was important in expanding the uses and possibilities of ci poetry. His political career, like that of his patron, was unstable and included demotions, twelve periods of exile, and even three months in prison. During an exile in Huangzhou he began calling himself Su Dongpo (Eastern Slope), which was the name of his farm. His poems are informed by a knowledge of Daoism and Chan (Zen) Buddhism, and like the earlier mystical farmer-poet Tao Qian, he was content on his farm, away from the political world.
A very personal poet, Su Shi wrote about the pain of his separations in exile, the death of his baby son, his joy in a simple walk in the countryside, and the pleasures of a good cup of wine. He is known for the exuberance he brought to his writing and is credited with founding of a school of heroic abandonment in writing.
Written on the North Tower Wall After Snow
In yellow dusk the slender rain still falls,
but the calm night comes windless and harsh.
My bedclothes feel like splashed water.
I don't know the courtyard is buried in salt.
Light dampens the study curtains before dawn.
With cold sound, half a moon falls from the painted eaves.
As I sweep the north tower I see Horse Ear Peak
buried except for two tips.
Written While Living at Dinghui Temple in Huangzhou, to the Tune of “Divination Song”
A broken moon hangs from a gaunt parasol tree.
The water clock has stopped, and people hush into sleep.
Who sees a hermit like me passing alone
like a shadow of a flying wild goose?
Startled and soaring off, I look back
with grief no one understands,
going from branch to branch, unwilling to settle,
and landing at last on a cold and desolate shoal.
Written in Response to Ziyou's Poem About Days in Mianchi **
A life touches on places
like a swan alighting on muddy snow—
accidental claw tracks left in the slush
before it soars east or west into the random air.
The old monk is dead, interred beneath the new pagoda,
and on ruined walls the poems we brushed are illegible.
Do you still remember the rugged path,
the endless road, our tired bodies, how our lame donkey brayed?
Boating at Night on West Lake
Wild rice stems endless on the vast lake.
Night-blooming lotus perfumes the wind and dew.
Gradually the light of a far temple appears.
When the moon goes black, I watch the lake gleam.
Brushed on the Wall of Xilin Temple
From the side it is a range; straight on, a peak.
Far, near, high, low, it never looks the same.
I can't see Mount Lu's true face
because I'm on the mountain.
from Rain on the Festival of Cold Food
2
The spring river is pushing at my door
but the rain will not let up.
My small house is like a fishing boat
surrounded by water and clouds.
In the empty kitchen cold vegetables are boiled,
wet reeds burning in the broken
stove.
Who knows it is the Cold Food Festival?
Ravens carry the dead's money in their bills,1
the emperor sits behind nine doors,
and my ancestors' tombs are ten thousand li away.
I want to cry at the forked road.
Dead ashes won't blow alive again.
Because of a Typhoon I Stayed at
Gold Mountain for Two Days
Up in the tower a bell is talking to itself.
The typhoon will wash out the ferry by tomorrow.
Dawn comes with white waves dashing dark rocks
and shooting through my window like deflected arrows.
A dragon boat of a hundred tons couldn't cross this river
but a fishing boat dances there like a tossed leaf.
It makes me think, why rush to the city?
I'll laugh at such fury of snakes and dragons,
stay aimlessly till the servants start to wonder
—with this kind of storm, my family won't mind.
I look for my friend, monk Qianshan. He's alone,
meditating past midnight and listening for the breakfast drum.1
To the Tune of “Song of the River Town,”
a Record of a Dream on the
Night of the First Month,
Twentieth Day, in the Eighth Year of the Xining Period (1705)
For ten years we two, one live, one dead, have been lost in a vast mist.
I don't think always of you
yet cannot forget.
Your lonely tomb is a thousand miles away.
I have no one to tell my sadness.
Even if we could meet again you wouldn't know me
with my dusty face,
my temples coated with frost.
At night in a dark dream I suddenly found myself home.
By the small window
you were combing your hair.
We looked at each other without words,
just a thousand lines of tears.
I know you'll wait for me each year in that heartbreak place
through nights of bright moon
under dwarf pine by your mound.
To the Tune of “Prelude to the Water Song”
“When will there be a luminous moon?”
I lift my wine and ask the black sky.
I don't know which year it is tonight in the sky palace.
I wish I could ride the wind and go there,
but I'd be afraid in heaven's jade towers.
It is too cold to be that high.
So I start to dance with my own shadow.
Nothing is better than the human world!
The moon circles a red pavilion
settling to the carved doors
and shines light on my insomnia.
I don't think it feels malice,
yet why is the moon so round when lovers separate?
We have sad and happy partings and reunions.
The moon has bright and dark fullness and waning.
Since ancient times nothing has been perfect
but love may last without end
since even a thousand miles apart we can share this full moon.
To the Tune of “Butterflies Adore Flowers”
Flowers fade to scraps of red. Small green apricots.
Swallows are flying
and green water circles a house.
On branches the cotton of willow catkins dwindles in wind.
Nowhere from here to the sky's edge is without fragrant grass.
Inside the wall is a swing. Outside is a road
where someone walks past
and hears a beauty laughing inside.
The laughter gradually fades, and the voices slowly quiet.
Those who feel love are teased by those who feel none.
Recalling the Past at the Red Cliffs, to the Tune of “Charms of Niannu”
The great river flows east
and its waves have washed away
all the heroes from ancient time.
West of the old fortress
is the Red Cliffs where it is said
Master Zhou1won his battle in the Three Kingdoms era.
Wild boulders spear into the sky,
terrible waves beat the bank
and swirl up a thousand snow sprays
and the river and mountains seem a painted landscape
where in old times so many heroes contended.
I imagine that year
when Gongjin had just married Xiao Qiao,
his bearing radiating a gallant spirit.
With a feather fan and silk headband
his talk and laughter
turned strong enemies to ashes. Gone like smoke.
And I, taking this spirit-voyage into the past,
perhaps I am laughable
with my white hairs sprouting so young.
This life is just a dream.
I raise my cup and pour a libation to the river moon.
Returning to Lingao at Night, to the Tune of “Immortal by the River”
Drunk at night, Dongpo awoke and got drunk again
and returned late as the night drum beat for the third time.
My page boy's snores were thunder.
I knocked and no one answered.
Leaning against my stick, I listened to the river.
I often mourn this body that doesn't really belong to me.
When can I forget this life of contention?
The night is deep, wind quiet, ripples smoothed flat.
In a small boat I could leave here
and live out the rest of my life on this river and the sea.
* In earlier years Su Shi and his brother had traveled together through this region. Their horses had died, so they were riding on donkeys. They stayed at the temple in Mianchi and wrote poems on the wall.
1 This symbolic money is made of punctured yellow paper cut in the shape of banknotes. It is burned at the tomb of the dead, a sacrifice to give them means on their way to the other world.
1 Literally, the “porridge drum,” the wooden board that when beaten announces that porridge breakfast is served.
1 Master Zhou was a military counselor who oversaw a great victory for the Kingdom of Wu over the Kingdom of Wei at the Red Cliffs, where fireboats destroyed the Wei fleet. Gongjin is another name for Master Zhou, and Xiao Qiao was his bride.
QIN GUAN
(1049–1100)
Known for his erotic lyric (ci form) poetry, Qin Guan was said to have married the sister of his friend Su Shi, the great Song dynasty poet, though this is doubtful. He failed in the imperial examinations at first, but passed them in 1085. He was the protégé of Su Shi and was known as one of the “Four Scholars at Su Shi's Gate.” His career was marked by the vicissitudes of the political winds—successful when those of his political ilk were in office, less so when not. Along with Su Shi and his other friends, he suffered exile, and his works were banned.
To the Tune of “Magpie Bridge Immortal”**
As slender clouds form clever shapes,
shooting stars convey the lovers' complaints.
They secretly ferry across the wide Celestial River.
In this moment gold wind and jade dew1 meet
with more ecstasy than any human world encounter.
Their tender feelings are like soft water,
but the reunion is short as a dream.
Unbearable to go back across this bridge built by magpies.
If love lasts long between a couple
they don't need to be together morning and night.
* The poem refers to the mythical story “The Cowherd and the Weaver Girl.” See note to Poem 10, “Far and far is the Cowherd Star,” from “Nineteen Ancient Poems” of the Han dynasty.
1 “Gold wind and jade dew”: “gold wind” is a symbol for the man and “jade dew” a symbol for the woman (they are also symbols for autumn).
MADAM WEI
(fl. c. 1050)
To the Tune of “Bodhisattva Barbarian”
A mountain stream in the setting sun where
a reflected tower shakes as mandarin ducks take flight.
Two or three cottages on the far bank with
red apricot flowers overhanging their walls.
On this path under green poplars by the stream bank
I walk at dawn and in dusk.
Since he left I've seen willow catkins fly three times
but my man is still gone.
To the Tune of “Bodhisattva Barbarian”
A wind from the east greens the grass in Yingzhou.
In a painted tower I roll up the curtain in morning frost
and see plum trees by the lake, so pure,
scattered flowers on their branches.
The long sky has cut off all word of you.
Again I see wild geese flying home.
This grief of separation is
bright moon over a tower in Changan.
To the Tune of “Attached to Her Skirt”