The Anchor Book of Chinese Poetry

by Tony Barnstone

  with cloudy windows and misty tower always shut?

  Willow leaf tips and plum blossoms take shape

  as spring returns to trees at Moling Tombs.

  In the City of Good Health, I am aging.

  Once I felt the moon and chanted poems of wind,

  but now I am old and have done nothing.

  Who could care for this withered self?

  I haven't the will to light the lantern

  or even to walk in the snow.

  Translated by Willis Barnstone and Sun Chu-chin

  To the Tune of “Lone Wild Goose”

  Rattan bed, paper netting. I wake from morning sleep.

  I can't reach the end of saying: I've no happy thoughts.

  Incense flickers on, off. The jade burner is cold,

  a companion to my feelings, which are water.

  I play three times with the flute,

  astonishing a plum's heart.

  How I feel spring's ache!

  Slender wind and thin rain, tapping, tapping.

  Down come a thousand lines of tears.

  The pipe-playing jade man is gone. Empty tower.

  My chest is broken. On whom can I lean?

  I break off a blossoming twig.

  On the earth and in heaven,

  there's no one to send it to.

  Translated by Willis Barnstone and Sun Chu-chin

  To the Tune of “The Fisherman's Song”

  Sky links cloud ways, links dawn fog.

  A star river is about to turn. One thousand sails dance.

  As if in dream my soul returns to a god's home,

  hearing heaven's voice,

  eagerly asking: Where are we going back to?

  I say: The road is long, the day near dusk;

  in writing poems startling words come invisibly.

  Ninety thousand miles of wind, the huge peng bird takes off.

  Wind, don't stop.

  The frail boat is to reach the three holy mountains.

  Translated by Willis Barnstone and Sun Chu-chin

  To the Tune of “Butterflies Adore Blossoms”

  Warm rain and sunny wind start to break the chill.

  Willows like eyes, plums like cheeks.

  I already feel spring's heart throbbing.

  Wine and poems.

  Whom can I share them with?

  Tears dissolve my makeup. My gold hairpin is heavy.

  I try on a light spring robe threaded with gold and lean against a hill of pillows. The hill damages the gold phoenix pin. Alone I hug dense pain with no good dreams. Late at night, I am still playing as I trim the wick.

  Translated by Willis Barnstone and Sun Chu-chin

  * Written after her husband's death.

  LU YOU

  (1125–12.10)

  Lu You was the most prolific poet of the Southern Song dynasty. He wrote approximately ten thousand poems. He is known as the Patriotic Poet for his fervor in exhorting the government in his poems to go to war and reunify China. In 1153 he was successful in passing the examinations necessary for a government position, but as the prime minister was his enemy, he found himself without a post until the prime minister's death in 1160. His military service on the border of Sichuan and Shaanxi deeply affected his outlook and his writing. After some years in the capital, he was dismissed from office for his outspokenness and went through a series of provincial posts until his retirement in 1190. His poetry is noted for its criticism of Song bureaucracy, its celebration of wine and Daoist individualism, and its sympathy for the poor.

  On the Fourth Day of the Eleventh

  Month During a Windy Rainstorm

  Lying stiff in a lonely village I don't feel sorry for myself;

  I still think of defending Luntai for my country.

  Deep in night in bed I hear wind blowing rain,

  and iron horses on an ice river enter my dream.

  Record of Dream, Sent to Shi Bohun,

  to the Tune of “Night Roaming in the Palace”

  A chaos of clear horns rings in the snow dawn

  of a place I visit in dream,

  I don't know where.

  As iron cavalry silently rivers past

  and I think of frontier waters

  west of Goose Gate,

  or of the Blue Sea of Qinghai.

  I awaken in cold lamplight.

  The water clock has stopped dripping.

  Slant moonlight through the paper window.

  I still wish to be knighted ten thousand miles from home.

  Hear this:

  though the hair on my temples is snow

  my heart is not yet old.

  Thinking of Going Outside on a Rainy Day

  As the east wind gusts rain, travelers struggle

  on a road of thin dust now paved with mud.

  The flowers are napping, willows nod, even spring is lazy.

  And I, I am even lazier than spring.

  To the Tune of “Phoenix Hairpin”**

  Her pink and creamy hands,

  some yellow-label sealed wine,

  a city full of spring and willows by palace walls.

  The east wind1 is evil,

  our happiness short.

  A cup of sorrow,

  many years apart.

  Wrong! Wrong! Wrong!

  The spring is the same,

  someone wastes away in vain,

  her handkerchief of mermaid silk2 is soaked with tears and rouge.

  Peach blossoms fall on

  an abandoned pool and pavilion.

  Our vows are still mountain strong

  yet it's hard to send even cryptic messages.

  No! No! No!

  The Sheng Garden **

  (Two Poems)

  1

  A military horn sounds sad on the city wall in the setting sun.

  The old landscape of the Sheng Garden doesn't seem the same.

  The green spring waves under the bridge hurt my heart—

  they once reflected her shadow coming like a startled swan goose.

  2

  For forty years a dream and fragrance—interrupted.

  Willows in the Sheng Garden are too old to blow catkins.

  My body is going to turn into Qi Mountain soil soon,

  and yet mourning over the old traces I'm all tears.

  To My Sons

  (His Deathbed Poem)4

  I know the world's ten thousand things end in emptiness after death,

  and yet I still grieve the splintering of the Nine States of China.

  When the royal troops regain the heartland in the north,

  don't forget to tell your old man when you perform rituals for the dead.

  * Lu You married a cousin with whom he grew up and was so in love with her that his mother grew jealous and wanted him to divorce her. Lu You bought another house for his wife and would often visit her there. When his mother found out about this, she was furious. She closed up the new house and forced him to divorce his wife. This poem was written on a wall in a garden on a day when Lu You met with his ex-wife and her new husband. His ex-wife asked her new husband to send over dishes and wine to Lu You, after which Lu You wrote the poem. See also “Tang Wan's Reply, to the Tune of ‘Phoenix Hairpin'” and “The Sheng Garden,” both below.

  1 The east wind symbolizes his mother.

  2 Mermaids were said to spin silk.

  * In the spring of 1155, Lu You met his ex-wife, Tang Wan, in the Sheng Garden and exchanged well-known lyric poems (see “To the Tune of ‘Phoenix Hairpin,'” above). After that encounter, Tang Wan died in depression. In the spring of 1199, Lu You revisited the Sheng Garden and wrote the above poems.

  4 Lu You's last poem, written on his deathbed at the age of eighty-five.

  TANG WAN

  (UNCERTAIN DATES)

  Tang Wan was the wife of Lu You (1125–1210). For the origin of this poem, see the note to Lu You's poem “To the Tune of ‘Phoenix Hairpin.'”

  Tang Wan's Reply,
to the Tune of “Phoenix Hairpin”**

  Human relationships are short.

  Human intentions are evil.

  When rain accompanies evening, flowers fall easily,

  but morning wind is dry.

  Tearstains remain.

  I want to write you my feelings

  but I only whisper to myself, leaning against banister.

  Hard! Hard! Hard!

  We are separate.

  Today is not yesterday.

  My sick soul moves like a swing between us.

  A cold blast from a horn.

  The night is late.

  Afraid of questions,

  I swallow my tears and smile.

  Hide! Hide! Hide!

  * Tang Wan was said to have written this poem in reply to Lu You's poem “To the Tune of ‘Phoenix Hairpin'” (earlier in this volume), but only the first two lines were recorded and someone else probably finished the poem. Some critics say that she wrote the entire poem.

  YANG WANLI

  (112.7–12.06)

  Yang Wanli was governor of Changzhou in Jiangsu province and director of the Imperial Library. He burned more than a thousand of his poems, but this didn't seem to have stopped his writing. Like his friend Lu You, he was an extraordinarily prolific poet, the author of thousands of later poems in many collections. Though his early work was written in imitation of such poets as Chen Shitao and Wang Anshi, he wrote that in 1178, when he was fifty-two, he underwent a poetic catharsis, an enlightenment that allowed him to discard all masters and write in his own style. He is a poet of the vernacular who had an influence on later poets, among them Yuan Mei. Despite his distinguished official career, his work evinces an affection for ordinary people. He was known as one of the “Four Masters of Southern Song Poetry.”

  Cold Sparrows

  Hundreds of cold sparrows dive into the empty courtyard,

  cluster on plum branches and speak of sun after rain at dusk.

  They choose to gather en masse and kill me with noise.

  Suddenly startled, they disperse. Then, soundlessness.

  XIN QIJI

  (1140–1207)

  Xin Qiji was born in Jinan, Shandong province, in 1140, a time when the north of China was occupied by Tartar invaders. When Xin grew up, he joined an uprising and fought the Tartars. Like his friend Lu You, he was a poet of idealism, patriotism, and militarism. Although he was a military hero and served in a series of government posts, he was not successful in translating his patriotic and militaristic fervor into government policy. He held a series of minor positions and was ultimately forced into retirement. While retired he took comfort in the Daoist tradition, which— like Buddhism—has often provided Chinese poets an alternative to the Confucian ideals of service and reform, especially when their careers have gone astray. Xin Qiji also wrote love songs, nature poems, and poems of a more learned and academic nature. He loved the lyric form, writing 626 ci poems to the patterns of 101 tunes. Like Su Shi, he is admired as a poet of unrestrained force, bold and free.

  Written on a Wall in the Boshan Temple,

  to the Tune of “Ugly Servant”

  When young I never knew the taste of sorrow

  yet loved to climb up towers,

  to climb up towers,

  and just to write poems I pretended to be miserable.

  Now I've exhausted all of sorrow's flavors

  but stop before I say it,

  stop before I say it,

  and finally just say, “What a cool autumn day.”

  The Night of the Lantern Festival,

  to the Tune of “Green Jade Table”**

  In east wind and night fireworks are thousands of trees blooming,

  shooting stars blow down like a shower

  over steeds and carved wagons on fragrance-filled roads,

  phoenix flutes singing with energy

  and the moon turns like a jade pot

  as fish-dragons dance through the night.

  Moth Hair and Snow Willow are dressed up in gold thread,

  laughing and talking, then gone with their fragrance.

  I search for my girl one thousand times in the crowd,

  turn my head and suddenly

  she is there

  where the light and fires are almost snuffed out.

  Village Life, to the Tune of

  “Clear Peaceful Happiness”

  A low and small thatched roof

  by a stream's green grass

  and two drunk voices talking sweet in a Wu dialect.

  Who is this old lady with white hair?

  Her eldest son is hoeing beans on the east side of the stream.

  The middle son is making a bamboo chicken cage.

  The youngest son is a lovely rogue—

  he lies on his back by the stream, tearing open a lotus seed pod.

  * The Lantern Festival marks the main Chinese holiday season. Boiled sweet dumplings are served, and there are hanging lanterns, lion and dragon dances, and a great fireworks and light show. Today it lasts from Chinese New Year's Day until the fifteenth of the first month of the Chinese calendar.

  JIANG KUI

  (1155–12.21)

  Jiang Kui, also known as the White Stone Daoist, came from Boyang, Jiangxi province, though his father, a scholar-official, moved the family to Hebei when Jiang Kui was a boy. His father died young, so he was raised by his sister and her husband. As a youth, Jiang Kui was a famous prodigy. A musician, a critic, and a poet, he lived in the areas of Suzhou, Hangzhou, Nanjing, and Huzhou in the lower Yangtze River area. Jiang Kui was not successful in finding a career in officialdom, and so he lived by selling his calligraphy and relying on patrons. He wrote extremely important works of poetics and notes on ci music, and he invented seventeen lyric form (ci) tune patterns. His poems “Hidden Fragrance” and “Sparse Shadows” are two of the best-known and loved Chinese poems about plum blossoms.

  Preface to “Hidden Fragrance” and “Sparse Shadows”

  In the winter of 1191, I visited Mr. Stone Lake (Fan Chengda)1 when it was snowing. After being back about a month, he wrote me a letter asking for new lines and new tunes. I composed the following two lyric songs. Mr. Stone Lake loved them so much that he asked the singing girls and musicians to practice them. They sounded very harmonious and nice and thus the songs were named “Hidden Fragrance” and “Sparse Shadows.”

  Hidden Fragrance

  The moon has an old color.

  How many times has it shined on me

  while I play a flute by the plum flowers?

  I recall a woman of jade

  even though it was chill

  breaking off a plum twig at departure.

  Now I am like He Sun,2 getting old,

  losing my touch

  for writing songs with a spring-wind brush.

  Why

  do sparse plum blossoms outside the bamboo grove

  spread cold fragrance to my jade banquet seat?

  The river country

  is all at once quiet.

  I sigh, too far away to send a blossoming twig.

  Night snow starts piling up.

  An emerald cup easily weeps

  and these silent red buds are bright with memory.

  I always remember the place we held hands:

  flowers pressed on thousands of trees

  by cold and green West Lake.

  Petal by petal,

  they all blow away.

  When can I see you again?

  Sparse Shadows

  A mossy branch decorated with pieces of jade.

  A small green bird

  spends the night with flowers on this branch.

  As a guest I met you

  by the corner of a fence in the evening.

  I was speechless, leaning back on slender bamboo.

  Zhaojun1 was not used to the faraway desert

  and secretly recalled her life north and south of the river.

  I imagine her jade rings

 
; on a moonlit night returning2

  and turning into these plum flowers in solitude.

  I recall an anecdote: deep in the palace a princess3 was asleep when a plum flower landed on her brow.

  Don't behave like spring wind

  which does not care for silvery winter plum blossoms.

  Make early arrangements for a gold wedding chamber4

  or you'll let your petal go with the waves

  and then complain

  like a sad tune from a jade-dragon flute.5

  I'll wait for that time

  and look again for her hidden fragrance

  coming through a small window into a scroll painting.

  1 Fan Chengda (1126–1193) was one of the finest poets of the Southern Song dynasty (1127–1279), well known as a master of the ci lyric poem.

  2 He Sun, a poet in the Liang dynasty, wrote a poem on early plum flowers. Here Jiang Kui uses He Sun to refer to himself.

  1 Lines 7–11 refer to Ming Fei (Wang Zhaojun). For more about her, see the note to Du Fu's “Five Poems About Historical Sites” (Poem Three) in this volume.

  2 ”I imagine her jade rings/on a moonlit night returning” alludes to a line from Du Fu's poem “Five Poems About Historical Sites” (Poem Three).

  3 The Taiping Yulan (Imperial Readings of Peace) tells the story of princess Shouyang, the daughter of Song emperor Wu, who took a nap outside the Hanzhang Hall. A plum flower landed on her forehead and left a five-petal print, which could not be wiped off.