Read The Anchor Book of Chinese Poetry Online
Authors: Tony Barnstone
It serves you right! Why didn't you come earlier?
Now my passion has become dead ash.
Don't even mention the past—
will-o'-the-wisp on a skeleton!
Future? Let's take separate paths—
Venus does not care for an evening dawn.
Love is silly, hatred is stupid,
who can count grains of sands in a river?
No matter how perfect your dream is,
it is surrounded by boundless dark.
It's like a moment of poetry dissolving.
Just bury your memory, fast!
Don't make that bitter face,
I'll always forget in the end!
Okay. Let me give you another kiss.
Hot! Now go! No more loitering here.
Gently, I am leaving,
just as I came gently.
I wave my hand gently
to bid farewell to the clouds in the western sky.
The golden willow by the
river is a bride to the setting sun,
Wen Yiduo 363
her beautiful reflection in the sparkling waves
ripples in my heart.
Green waterweeds in the soft mud
freely waver underwater.
In the soft waves of the Cambridge River
I wish I were a waterweed blade.
In elm shade the pool
is not clear but an iridescence
refracted among duckweeds,
distilling a rainbowlike dream.
Looking for dream? Use a long pole
and move to where grass is even greener
with a boatful of clear moonlight
and sing loud in the light of stars.
But I can't sing loud.
Silence is the
sheng
and
xiao
music of departure.
Even summer insects remain silent for me.
Silent is tonight's Cambridge.
Silently I am leaving,
just as I came silently,
waving my sleeve
and taking away not even a wisp of cloud.
Wen Yiduo (pen name of Wen Jiahua) was born in 1899 in Xishui, Hubei province, to a wealthy and well-educated family. He was perhaps the finest poet affiliated with the Western-influenced Crescent Moon Society School in pre-Revolution China. After a
thorough traditional education in the Chinese classics and a degree from Qinghua University, he studied English literature at Colorado College, Colorado Springs, and painting at the Chicago Art Institute. He then moved to New York. Encouraged by his exposure to Western literature in college, he began writing poetry in the vernacular. While in America he met Carl Sandburg, Amy Lowell, and Harriet Monroe, editor of the distinguished and influential journal
Poetry
, which published many of the American modernist poets. It was John Keats, however, who became his poetic model.
Wen's first book,
The Red Candle
, was published in 1923, while he lived in New York. Disturbed by the racial discrimination he witnessed in American Chinatowns, he moved back to China, hoping to organize an intellectual renewal. While in China he dabbled in politics, helped found the influential Crescent School of poets, which met in his apartment, and became a distinguished scholar, specializing in the study of the
Verses of Chu
but also writing about the
Book of Songs
, Music Bureau poetry, and other topics in classical Chinese literature. He worked at the Beijing Art School and at Wuhan and Qingdao Universities, and in 1932 he became the chair of the Chinese literature department at Qinghua University. After his four-year-old daughter died, he published his second and final volume,
Dead Waters
, in 1928. His poetry is vernacular yet polished and formally rigorous; he makes it “dance in chains,” in Han Yu's phrase. He engaged in guerrilla activities in Yunnan against the Nationalist government of the Guomindang, and on July 15, 1946, he was assassinated by hired agents of the Guomindang.
I never wanted the red of fire, the black at midnight
of the Peach Blossom Pool, the mournful melody of the
p'i-p'a,
1
or the fragrance of roses. I never loved the stern
pride of the leopard, and no white dove ever had
the beauty I craved. I never wanted any of these things,
but their crystallization—a miracle ten thousand
times more rare than them all! But I am famished and harried.
I cannot go without nourishment: even if it is
dregs and chaff, I still have to beg for it. Heaven knows
I do not wish to be like this. I am by no means
so stubborn or stupid. I am simply tired of waiting,
tired of waiting for the miracle to arrive; and
I dare not starve. Ah, who doesn't know of how little worth
is a tree full of singing cicadas, a jug of turbid wine,
or smoky mountain peaks, bright ravines, stars
glittering in the empty sky? It is all so ordinary,
so inexorably dull, and it isn't worth our ecstatic joy,
our crying out the most moving names, or the
longing to cast gold letters and put them in a song.
I also affirm that to let tears come
at the song of an oriole is trivial, ridiculous,
and a waste of time. But who knows? I cannot be otherwise.
I am so famished and harried I take lamb's-quarters and wild hyssop for fine grain—
but there's no harm
in speaking clearly as long as the miracle appears.
Then at once I will cast off the ordinary. I will never
again gaze at a frosted leaf and dream of a spring blossom's
dazzle. I will not waste my strength, peel open
stones, and demand the warmth of white jade.
Give me one miracle, and I will never again whip ugliness,
and compel it to give up the meaning of its
opposite. Actually, I am weary of all this,
and these strained implications are hard to explain.
All I want is one clear word flashing like a Buddhist relic
with fierce light. I want it whole, complete,
shining in full face. I am by no means so stubborn
or stupid; but I cannot see a round fan without
seeing behind it an immortal face. So,
I will wait for as many incarnations as it takes—
since I've made a vow. I don't know how many
incarnations have already passed; but I'll wait
and wait, quietly, for the miracle to arrive.
That day must come! Let lightning strike me,
volcanoes destroy me. Let all hell rise up and crush me!
Am I terrified? No, no wind will blow out
the light in me. I only wish my cast-off body
would turn into ashes. And so what? That, that minutest
fraction of time is a minutest fraction of—
ah, an extraordinary gust, a divine and stellar hush
(sun, moon, and spin of all stars stopped;
time stopped, too)—the most perfectly round peace.
I hear the sound of the door pivoting: and with it the
rustling of a skirt. That is a miracle.
And in the space of a half-open gold door,
you are crowned with a circle of light!
Translated by Arthur Sze
Perhaps you have wept and wept, and can weep no more.
Perhaps. Perhaps you ought to sleep a bit;
then don't let the nighthawk cough, the frogs
croak, or the bats fly.
Don't let the sunlight open the curtain onto your eyes.
Don't let a cool breeze brush your eyebrows.
Ah, no one will be able to startle you awake:
I will open an umbrella of dark pines to shelter your sleep.
Perhaps you hear earthworms digging in the mud,
or listen to the root hairs of small grasses sucking up water.
Perhaps this music you are listening to is lovelier
than the swearing and cursing noises of men.
Then close your eyelids, and shut them tight.
I will let you sleep; I will let you sleep.
I will cover you lightly, lightly with yellow earth.
I will slowly, slowly let the ashes of paper money fly.
Translated by Arthur Sze
It's no joke at all, I'm not that sort of poet.
Though I adore the sheen of white quartz,
Though I love green pines, vast seas, the glimmer of sunset on a crow's back,
The dusky sky interwoven with the wings of bats,
Though I adore heroes and high mountains,
The flags of nations waving in the wind,
All colors from saffron to the heavy bronze of chrysanthemums,
Remember my food is a pot of old tea.
You should be afraid: there is another person in me:
His imagination is a gnat's and he crawls through muck.
Translated by Ho Yung
The lamplight has whitened the walls,
The faithful tables and chairs are as intimate as friends,
There comes from the heaped books the smell of old paper,
My favorite cups look virtuous like virgins,
The baby presses his mouth against his mother's nipples,
From somewhere a snore proclaims the health of my eldest son.
O mysterious calm night, O perfect peace,
O voice of gratitude trembling in my throat!
And then once more the sweet damnable curse returns—
Calm night! No, I refuse to accept your bribe!
Who will fill the narrow space between these walls?
My world is larger and includes other worlds:
These walls cannot be separated from the agony of war.
How can you find a way to stop my heart beating?
Better to let my youth be filled with mud and sand
Than to praise one's own happiness and sufferings!
Better let rats dig deep holes in my skull,
Better let worms feed on the pulp of flesh and blood!
Once, did we live only for a cup of bread and for songs,
For the pleasant sound of the pendulum ticking in a calm night?
How did we hear the groans of our neighbors,
How could we see the shadows of the widows and orphans shivering against the wall,
Twitch of death in trenches, madmen biting their beds,
All these tragic scenes running under the mill of life.
Happiness! I shall not receive your bribes!
My world is not enclosed within these narrow walls.
Listen! The cannon shot, the god of Death roaring!
O calm night, how can you stop my heart beating?
Translated by Ho Yung
Here is a ditch of hopelessly dead water.
A cool breeze would not raise the slightest ripple on it.
You might throw in some scraps of copper and rusty tins,
or dump in as well the remains of your meal.
Perhaps the green on copper will turn into emeralds,
or the rust on tin will sprout a few peach blossoms.
Let grease weave a layer of fine silk gauze,
and mold steam out a few red-glowing clouds.
Let the dead water ferment into a ditch of green wine,
floating with pearls of white foam;
but the laughter of small pearls turning into large pearls
is broken by spotted mosquitoes stealing the wine.
Thus a ditch of hopelessly dead water
can yet claim a bit of something bright.
And if the frogs can't endure the utter solitude,
let the dead water burst into song.
Here is a ditch of hopelessly dead water.
Here beauty can never reside.
You might as well let ugliness come and cultivate it,
and see what kind of world comes out.
Translated by Arthur Sze
Dewdrops are sobbing in the hollows of bamboos,
The green tongues of plantains are licking the windowpanes,
The four walls are receding—
Alone, I cannot fill this empty room.
I build a fire in my heart
And wait quietly for the guest from afar.
I stoke it with cobwebs and rat droppings
And mottled snake scales.
Roosters hurry me when ashes lie in the fireplace.
A cold wind sneaks up and touches my lips—
So the guest has arrived.
Closing my eyes, I follow him out.
Translated by Michelle Yeh
1
P'i-p'a: a musical instrument known as the balloon-guitar.
Li Jinfa (born Li Shuliang; the pen name “jinfa” means “golden hair”) came from Guangdong province and was an artist, a poet, and an essayist. He went to school in Hong Kong and Shanghai and studied sculpture in Paris (he also studied in Dijon and Berlin). He published his three books of poetry between 1919 and 1925 and then returned to China, where he taught in a number of art schools. He became a diplomat in 1932 and served in the Chinese embassies in Iraq and Iran during the war. He moved to the United States in 1951 and lived in New Jersey until his death.
Li Jinfa is known for the difficulty and obscurity of his poetry. As Bonnie S. McDougall and Kam Louie write, “Li Jinfa claims that his poems will encourage the ecstasy of sexual love in his prudish homeland. To this end, he employs a variety of shock tactics: suspension of logical and grammatical relationships, bizarre
imagery, and irony. The mode is French symbolism, chiefly Ver-laine and Baudelaire; the mood is self-consciously decadent, featuring words denoting weariness, death, and decay. For added exoticism, French and German words and allusions are freely (sometimes perhaps at random) scattered in the text.”
1
In “A Record of My Own Inspiration” (1933), Li Jinfa wrote, “When writing poems I never prepared myself to worry if people found them difficult, I simply sought to give vent to the poetic feeling in my heart of hearts. Now, indeed, there are many in the world whose heartstrings have struck a common chord with mine. My style has universal appeal. I just cannot be like others and use poetry to write about revolutionary thought, or stir people to strike out and shed blood. My poetry is a record of my own inspiration, a song sung aloud in intoxication, I cannot hope that everyone will understand it.”
2