Read The Anchor Book of Chinese Poetry Online
Authors: Tony Barnstone
Her pink and creamy hands,
some yellow-label sealed wine,
a city full of spring and willows by palace walls.
The east wind
1
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 silk
2
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!
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.
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.
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 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.'”
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 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.”
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 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.
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.”
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.
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, 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.
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.”
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?
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.
Zhaojun
1
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 returning
2
and turning into these plum flowers in solitude.
I recall an anecdote: deep in the palace a princess
3
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 chamber
4
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.
4
The
hanwu gushi (Story of Emperor Wu in the Han Dynasty)
tells how Han emperor Wu said to his aunt, “If I can marry Ah Jiao, I will build a gold chamber to keep her.”
5
This refers to Li Bai's two lines “Playing a jade flute in the Yellow Crane Tower,/while plum petals fall in May in a river city,” from his poem “Listening to a Flute in Yellow Crane Tower.”
Yan Rui, also known as You Fang, was registered as an official courtesan at Tiantai. She was known for her calligraphy, singing, dancing, painting, and her skill at playing Go. Attracted by her beauty and talent, gentlemen would travel a thousand miles to meet her. Well versed in literature and history, she wrote good lyric songs; three poems are attributed to her. When Tang Zhongyou was the governor at Tiantai, he once asked her to improvise a poem about white and pink peach flowers. She did it without hesitation, and they became lovers. The poem below was said to have been written after Yan Rui had been jailed and repeatedly beaten for refusing to inform on her lover. An inspector, wanting to frame Tang Zhongyou, accused him of favoring Yan Rui. He had her thrown into prison and tortured for two months, and yet she still refused to say a word about Tang Zhongyou. The poem below, in which she states her case, won her
release from prison and from registration as an official courtesan. She later got married as a concubine to someone close to her clan. Her poetry is considered to be natural and free of affectation.