The lamp flickers bright, bright, and the water clock drips and drips.
Now that my lover has left
the night is so cold.
A frenzied west wind blows and fetches me back from dream.
Does anyone miss me
as I lean alone on my pillow
with knitted brows?
My brocade screen and embroidered drapes show in autumn dawn.
This pain breaks me inside
and I shed secret tears.
I still see a bright moon in my small west window.
I hate you,
I adore you,
but what would you know of that?
NIE SHENQIONG
(uncertain dates)
Nie Shenqiong was a courtesan known for her sweetness and intelligence. She lived in the capital of the Northern Song dynasty. Legend has it that an affair took place between Nie Shenqiong and Li Zhiweng, who stayed in the capital with her for quite a few months. When Li was urged by his wife to return home, Nie gave him the first poem presented here, “To the Tune of ‘Partridge Sky.'” Li's wife found this poem in Li's luggage and asked him to explain. In the end she decided to help her husband marry Nie. After Nie became a member of the family, she dressed down and gave up her makeup and treated Li's wife with utter respect. It is said that they lived a very harmonious life together.
To the Tune of “Partridge Sky”
The jade feels tragic, the flowers grieve, because you've left
Phoenix City. Willow twigs are tender green under Lotus Tower. When you raised a cup of wine I sang the “Song of Farewell at
Yangguan” then walked how many miles in seeing you off.
I'm looking for a good dream
but a dream is hard to find.
Does anyone know my feelings now?
My tears fall on the pillow as the eaves drip on the steps.
Separated by my window, we both drip until the dawn.
ANONYMOUS (“THE GIRL WHO TOOK THE GOLD CUP”)
(early twelfth century)
The following poem was written by a young woman known only as “The Girl Who Took the Gold Cup.” Under Emperor Huizong (reigned 1101–1125), women were allowed to go out at night and enjoy a cup of wine during the capital's Lantern Festival. When one young woman was seen walking off with a gold cup, she was arrested by the guards. Brought before the emperor, she recited this poem, arguing that after drinking wine she needed to take the royal cup to prove to her in-laws that the emperor himself had given the women permission to drink. The emperor was so impressed with her poem that he gave her the cup as a gift and ordered the guards to walk her home.
To the Tune of “Partridge Sky”
Moon fills the sky while lanterns burn like stars.
Hand in hand I walked with my man to the Duan Gate
but drawn in by songs and goose-formation dances
I didn't realize I'd become a mandarin duck without my mate.
In the slow dawning,
I was grateful for your imperial largesse
when the royal gift of wine was announced,
but afraid my parents-in-law would scold me for drinking
I took this cup to prove my innocence.
ZHOU BANGYAN
(1056–112.1)
Zhou Bangyan came from Qiantang (present-day Hangzhou) in Zhejiang province. He was a musician and a poet who extended the lyric song (ci form) tradition with original compositions and poems.
According to Zhang Duanyi's Guier Lu (Records of Aristocratic Ears) and a collection titled Anecdotes of Ci Poets, one day Emperor Huizong of the Song dynasty visited courtesan Li Shishi. The poet Zhou Bangyan happened to be there and had no way to exit, so he hid under the bed and observed their tryst. It was based on this experience that he wrote “To the Tune of ‘Rambling Young Man,'” which critics praised for the way he presented the woman, who delicately manipulates the emperor into staying without overstepping her bounds. On his visit the emperor had brought with him a fresh orange from south of the Yangtze River as part of a tribute. The poet turned this event into a song, which the courtesan some time later sang before the emperor. The emperor was so enraged that he had Zhou Bangyan expelled from the Forbidden City. The emperor then went to see Li Shishi and found her in tears, distraught at Zhou Bangyan's expulsion. He asked whether Zhou had written any new songs, and she replied that he had written “Willows, to the Tune of ‘King of Lanling,'” which she proceeded to sing for him. The emperor was so pleased with the song that he restored Zhou to his post as chief musician of the Da Cheng Imperial Conservatory.
To the Tune of “Rambling Young Man”
A knife from Bing State like a wave,
salt from Wu State like snow.
Her slender hands cut the orange.
The curtained room is warming up.
Endless smoke from the animal-head incense burner.
A couple sits close necking.
She asks low,
“Where are you going to stay?
The midnight drum has sounded
and your horse may slip with the frost so heavy.
Better not to leave.
Few people go home at such an hour.”
To the Tune of “Butterflies Adore Flowers”
Moon so bright that crows can't settle for the night.
The water clock is about to run out.
Someone is fetching water from a well with a windlass.
He wakes to two eyes, clear and focused,
dropping tears on his pillow, staining the cold red cotton.
He holds her hand as frost winds tug at her hair
and his resolution to go wavers.
So hard to hear good-bye.
The Great Dipper rolls into line with the upstairs banister.
Cold dew, the man is gone, and the cocks are calling to each other.
Willows, to the Tune of “King of Lanling”
Willow shadows hang in straight lines,
misty threads of emerald silk.
On the Sui bank how many times did I see
the twigs touching water and catkins floating in air, the color of departure?
I climb here to gaze at my hometown
but who could know me, a tired traveler from the capital
on this road by the Long Pavilion
who as old years died and new years came
must have broken over a thousand feet of willow twigs?
In the time I have I seek old memories
but now with a sad music
lanterns light my farewell banquet and pear flowers and elm torch fire hasten the day of the Cold Food Festival.
I am plagued by this wind, fast as an arrow,
see the boatman with half a pole in warm waves,
the piers retreating from me one by one when I look back.
My friend you are gone, north of heaven.
Heartsick,
my pain piles up.
The boat sails off but the water circles back
to the silent pier
as a slant sun extends through endless spring.
I remember holding your hands in a moonlit pavilion,
listening to a flute on a dew-soaked bridge.
I think of the past,
all just a dream,
and drop secret tears.
ZHU SHUZHEN
(1063–1106)
Zhu Shuzhen was born in Hangzhou, Zhengjiang, to a scholar-official's family. Her unharmonious relationship with her husband was revealed in her poetry. Although she was very prolific, her parents burned most of her poems. Wei Zhonggong collected what survived of her writings and wrote in his preface to the 1182 volume: “I have heard that writing beautiful phrases is not women's business. Yet there are occasionally cases [of women] with great natural talents and exceptional character and intelligence who come up with words and lines no man can match.” Though the poet had been dead for decades, the compiler praised her poems for their evocations of sorrow and womanhood.1 In a
ddition to being a wonderful poet, Zhu Shuzhen was also said to have been a painter.
To the Tune of “Mountain Hawthorn”
Every year at the jade mirror stand,
it's harder to paint myself into a plum flower.
You didn't return home this year,
and each letter from across the Yangtze fills me with fear.
I drink less since our separation,
my tears exhausted in sorrow.
I see deep Chu clouds when I think of him in distance.
My man is far and the world's edge is near.
To the Tune of “Mountain Hawthorn”
When the Cold Food Day has just ended
the east wind becomes cruelly strong.
I'm in no mood to hunt flowers in the wilds
and even when idle I don't spend my time on swing sets.
My jade body is so thin my skirt can be folded at the waist. Silk clothes feel so sheer when I feel this sick. I don't have the heart to roll up my curtain and look. Just let the pear flowers fall in solitude.
To the Tune of “Washing Creek Sands”
Spring night,
my jade body is soft as a gold hairpin
as, back to the lamp, I unfasten my silk skirt.
But the quilt and pillow are cold. The night's fragrance is gone.
Spring is a deep courtyard of many locked doors.
Petals falling in falling rain make the night seem forever.
Regret comes to me in dream. There is no escape.
Spring Complaint, to the Tune of
“Magnolia Blossoms” (Short Version)
I walk alone, sit alone,
sing alone, drink alone, and sleep alone.
Standing lone, my spirit hurts.
A light cold caresses me.
Who can see how
tears have washed off half my makeup,
sorrow and sickness have joined hands,
how I trim the lamp's wick till it's gone and dream still does not come?
The Song of A-na
Returning from dream, sobering up, I fear spring sorrow.
Smoke dies in the duck-shaped incense burner, but the fragrance lingers.
My thin quilt can't stop the dawn chill.
Cuckoos sing and sing till from the west tower the moon drops.
1 Patricia Buckley Ebrey, The Inner Quarters: Marriage and the Lives of Chinese Women in the Sung Period (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), p. 123.
ZHU XIZHEN
(uncertain dates)
Zhu Xizhen, the daughter of Zhu Jiangshi, came from Jiangan. According to Talks in the Garden of Lyric Songs (ciyuan congtan), she is also known as Zhu Qiuniang and was the wife of Xu Biyong. Her husband was a merchant who traveled often, sometimes not returning for years. Zhu Xizhen wrote poetry that expressed her longing for him. This is essentially all that we know about her. Her poems are found in Complete Song Lyric Songs (quan songci), where she is put in the category of figures that appeared in Vernacular Fiction of the Song Dynasty. People who appeared in Vernacular Fiction could be real or fictional; the works attributed to them could be their own or could have been composed by other people under their names.
from Fisherman, to the Tune of
“A Happy Event Draws Near”
(Five of Six Poems)
1
Shaking his head, he walks out on the dusty world. Awake or drunk, he is outside of time. Wearing green cape and bamboo hat to make his living, he is used to wearing frost and charging into snowflakes.
The wind ceases toward evening and his fishing line idles.
The new moon is above and below.
For a thousand miles water and sky are the same color.
He watches a lonely swan goose brightening up and fading out.
2
In my sight are a few idlers.
Of them the fisherman is most relaxed.
Wearing the seal of the palace of underwater immortals
he fears no bad wind or waves.
His heart can't be fathomed by common folk
since names are only empty counterfeits.
His one oar crosses five lakes and three islands.
He just lets the tip of his boat play.
3
The fisherman arrives standing up.
I know it's him by the fishing rod.
He spins his boat around at will,
traceless like a bird across sky.
Blooming or fading, reed flowers have their own floating lives
so the best strategy is get drunk all the time.
Last night, a riverful of wind and rain.
No one heard anything.
4
Steering the fishing boat around.
All rivers and seas are my home.
I'm going to Dongting Lake to buy wine,
Leaving Qiantang River behind, a bamboo hat on my back.
My drunk face turns redder in the cold.
The tide goes down the moraine.
Passing Ziling shoal
I see in bloom one plum flower.
5
Short oars and a light fishing boat.
Evening mist veils water along the river.
Fortress wild geese and sea gulls take separate flights,
highlight the autumn scene between the river and heaven.
Metallic fish scales clash in the crowded fish basket. Just enough to buy some wine. A sail returns in smooth wind. No one can hold it.
LI QINGZHAO
(1084-c.1151)
Li Qingzhao is China's finest woman poet, a master of the ci form. She was born in what is today Qinan, Shandung province, to a gifted literary family; her talent was recognized in her teens. In 1101 she married Zhao Mingzheng, the son of a powerful politician, who shared her tastes for literature, painting, and calligraphy and who soon embarked on a career as an official. When China went through the tumultuous transition from the Northern to the Southern Song dynasties, Li Qingzhao's husband's career was cut short, and they devoted themselves to art collecting and cataloging. An invasion of the Qin Tatars in 1127 sent Li Qingzhao fleeing from the capital with just a few belongings; her husband was away from Nanjing at the time, attending his mother's funeral. Li Qingzhao traveled across China for months, finally joining her husband in Nanjing, where he had become mayor. Just two years later her husband died en route to a new posting, and Li Qingzhao drifted across China, settling at last in Linan (modern Hangzhou), where in 1132 she entered into a brief marriage with a minor military official. Her poems are the best evidence of her life, capturing the sorrow she endured over separations from her husband and over his death and sketching her life as a society woman. From her voluminous writings (six volumes of poetry, seven volumes of essays) only about fifty poems have survived, but what does remain is powerful and masterful enough to have cemented her reputation as a major world poet.
To the Tune of “Intoxicated in the Shade of Flowers”
Slight mist, fat clouds. This endless day is torture.
Lucky Dragon incense dissolves in the gold animal.
It's Autumn Festival, a good season,
but by midnight the chill will pierce
my jade pillow and thin silk curtains.
I drink wine by the east fence in yellow dusk
and a secret fragrance fills my sleeves.
Do not say my spirit isn't frayed.
The west wind tangles in the curtains.
I am thinner than a yellow flower.
To the Tune of “One Blossoming Sprig of Plum”
The scent of red lotus fades and my jade mat is cold as autumn.
Gently I loosen my silk robe
and enter the magnolia boat alone.
Who has sent an embroidered letter via clouds?
Wild geese form a character in the sky: return.
The west tower fills with moon.
Blossoms drift and water flows where it will,
but my heart is still sick,
split
between this place and where you are.
I can't kill this desire.
Even when my eyebrows relax,
my heart flares up again.
To the Tune of “Spring at Wu Ling” **
The wind fades. Dropped blossoms perfume the earth.
At the end of the day, I'm too lazy to comb my hair.
His things remain, but he is gone, and the world is dead.
I try to speak but choke in tears.
I hear that spring is lovely at Twin Brook.
I'd row there in a light craft
but fear my grasshopper boat
is too small to carry this grief.
To the Tune of “Silk-Washing Brook”
I don't need deep cups of thick amber wine. My feelings will warm before I drown in drink. Already sparse bells are answering the night wind.
Lucky Dragon incense fades as my soul-dream breaks. From my loose hair drops a soft gold hairpin; I wake alone and watch the red candle die.
To the Tune of “Dream Song”
I'll never forget sunset at Brook Pavilion— drunk with beauty, we lost our way. When the ecstasy faded, we turned our boat home, but it was late and we strayed into a place deep
with lotus flowers and rowed hard, so hard the whole shore erupted with herons and gulls.
To the Tune of “Immortal by the River”
My courtyard is deep, deep, how deep is it,
The Anchor Book of Chinese Poetry Page 29