New Year's Eve by Su Tung Po 1037-1101 New Year's Eve-- you'd think I could go home early but official business keeps me. I hold the brush and face them with tears: pitiful convicts in chains, little men who tried to fill their bellies, fell into the law's net, don't understand disgrace. And I? In love with a meagre stipend I hold on to my job and miss the chance to retire. Don't ask who is foolish or wise; all of us alike scheme for a meal. The ancients would have freed them a while at New Year -- would I do otherwise? I am silent with shame. Note: this poem was written in 1071, when Su was vice-governor of Hangchow. By custom, criminal cases involving the death penalty had to be settled before New Year's Day. |
My Comment The poet feels humiliated at his inability to be as compassionate as his legendary predecessors. He looks sympathetically at the criminals and cynically at himself. He recognises that he is just like the criminals in the way that he protects his own livelihood, irrationally at times. The brush he holds is a writing implement. With it he will form the Chinese characters that will make their executions official. He is a man trapped by his dependence on a modest salary. There is a modern equivalent in a civil servant who will do nothing that will endanger his superannuation payout. It is a bleak and painfully honest poem with the ring of truth. Merv Daw |
| Window on Chinese Poetry |
Collection Five |
Climbing up Cold Mountain by Han Shan Clambering up Cold Mountain, the Cold Mountain Trail goes on and on; the long gorge choked with scree and boulders, the wide creek, the mist-blurred grass. The moss is slippery though there's been no rain. The pine sings, but there�s no wind. Who can leap the world's ties and sit with me among the white clouds? Adapted from a translation by Gary Snyder |
My Comment There is unexplained moisture near the top of the mountain, but that is not the only inexplicable thing. What is making the pine sing? This poem has wonderful, tough imagery of the mountain, even in English translation. Although it has been a long and laborious climb, he feels inspired by the setting and invites anyone to join him, meditating on the peak among the clouds. Merv Daw |
"the long gorge choked with scree and boulders, the wide creek, the mist-blurred grass." |
Early Autumn by Xu Hun A harp in the night is playing clear; the west wind rustles a green vine. A low cloud touches the jade-white dew; an early wildgoose flies in the River of Stars. Night in the tall trees clings to dawn; light makes folds in the distant hills. Here on the Huai, by one falling leaf, I can feel a storm on Lake Dongting. |
My Comment Amazing imagery, isn't it? There is an oblique reference here to the idea that everything in nature affects everything else. It is part of the yin yang theory of things being complementary and necessary to each other. On the river, a single falling leaf tells him of the storm on the distant lake. The images are fresh and alive, with each one affecting your reading of the other. There is faint music, the rustling of the wind, the whiteness of clouds and dew, the single bird flying across the starry sky, dim light in the trees, she shape of hills revealed in the soft morning light, then the single leaf falling. It's a beautiful, dynamic picture, with movement, sound and change. Merv Daw |
"Night in the tall trees clings to dawn; light makes folds in the distant hills." |
A Woman of Quality by Bai Ju Yi Matchless in breeding and beauty, a fine lady has taken refuge in this forsaken valley. She is of good family, she says, but her fortune has withered away; now she lives as the grass and trees. When the heartlands fell to the rebels her brothers were put to death; birth and position availed nothing� she was not even allowed to bring home their bones for burial. The world turns quickly against those who have had their day� fortune is a lamp-flame flickering in the wind. Her husband is a fickle fellow who has a lovely new woman. Even the Morning Glory is more constant, folding its flowers every dusk, and mandarin ducks sleep with their mates. But he has eyes only for his new woman�s smile, and his ears are deaf to his first wife's weeping. High in the mountains spring water is clear as truth, but when it reaches the lowlands it is muddied with rumour. Her serving-maid returns from selling her pearls; she drags a creeper over to cover holes in the roof. The flowers the lady picks are not for her hair, and the handfuls of cyprus are a bitter stay against hunger. Her pretty blue sleeves are too thin for the cold; as evening falls she leans on the tall bamboo. |
My Comment This a very sad portrait and history of a woman whose wealth and position have evaporated in tough times. She still has a servant girl, but the days of keeping up appearances have long gone and she is reduced to genuine poverty and struggling to fight off the cold and starvation. The story of how she was not even permitted to bury the bodies of her brothers sounds like the story of Antigone from the Ancient Greek tragedy of that name, written by Sophocles. Merv Daw |
"A Sketch of Mount Chung" by Wang An-shih Noiselessly, the mountain stream circles the bamboo grove. West of the bamboo, flowers and grasses sport with the tenderness of spring. I sit under thatched eaves facing this all day. Not a single bird sings; the silence of the hills deepens. |
My Comment Meditation poem. Take it easy and let your mind heal itself from the stresses of daily living. Time. Silence. Peace. Merv Daw |
Spending the Night at a Mountain Temple by Chia Tao A host of peaks rear up into the colour of cold. At this point the road splits to the meditation hall. Shooting stars pierce through bare trees, and a rushing moon retreats from moving clouds. Visitors come but rarely to the very summit; cranes do not flock together in the tall pines. There is a monk, eighty years old, who has never heard of what happens in the world. |
My Comment The negatives in the last few lines are interesting. Life is plain and bare. The setting is dramatic and bare, too, with shooting stars, clouds and the moon clearly visible through the leafless trees of winter. Notice all of those forceful verbs. There is a cold energy in these lines that is memorable, and I like that first line: "A host of peaks rear up into the colour of cold." Merv Daw |
"On the Yangtze" by Wang An-shih River waters shiver in the west wind; river blossoms shed their late red. Separation's sorrow is blown by a flute over the jumbled hills to the east. |
"A Song of Chang-kan" by Li Bai My hair had hardly covered my forehead. I was picking flowers, playing by my door, when you, my lover, on a bamboo horse, came trotting in circles and throwing green plums. We lived near together in a lane in Ch'ang-kan, both of us young and happy-hearted. At fourteen I became your wife, so bashful that I dared not smile, and I lowered my head toward a dark corner and would not turn to your thousand calls; but at fifteen I straightened my brows and laughed, learning that no dust could ever seal our love, that even unto death I would await you by my post And would never lose heart in the tower of silent watching. Then when I was sixteen, you left on a long journey through the Gorges of Chu-tang, of rock and whirling water. And then came the fifth month, more than I could bear, and I tried to hear the monkeys in your lofty far-off sky. Your footprints by our door, where I had watched you go, were hidden, every one of them, under green moss, hidden under moss too deep to sweep away. And the first autumn wind added fallen leaves. And now, in the eighth month, yellowing butterflies hover, two by two, in our west-garden grasses and, because of all this, my heart is breaking and I fear for my bright cheeks, lest they fade. Oh, at last, when you return through the three Pa districts, send me a message home ahead! and I will come and meet you and will never mind the distance, all the way to Chang-feng Sha. (adapted from a translation by Virginia library) |
My Comment Li Bai is a very famous poet in China, with a dramatic persona all of his own, the macho, mischievous, wine-drinking story-teller. This poem is remarkable in that he puts his own persona aside and adopts the persona of a very young wife, painfully shy at first, absolutely devoted later. Li Bai masterfully captures the longing and anguish of the girl waiting ever hopefully for her husband's return. She is certain that she will "never lose heart in the tower of silent watching." The poem is really charming in the way that it refers to the way they first met as children playing. Later, moss symbolises the passing of time since he left, and the pairs of butterflies remind her of their close, loving relationship. Did he return? Merv Daw |
Kuei-Chou by Du Fu Above Kuei-chou's wall, a cloud-form village; below: wind-tossed sheets of falling rain, a swollen river thrashing in the gorge. Thunder and lightning battle. Kingfisher-grey trees and ashen ivy shroud sun and moon. War horses can't compare to those back in quiet pastures. But of a thousand homes, a bare hundred remain. Ai - Ai - the widow beaten by life's toll, grief-torn, sobbing; in what village, where, on the autumn plain? |
A servant boy arrives by Du Fu Fresh greens grace haw and pear. Tinged apricot and plum have turned half yellow. The courtyard silent � a boy comes, bringing ripe, fragrant fruit in delicate baskets. Replete with mountain wind, iced with wild dew, the flavours shine. Propped on pillows, a guest of rivers and lakes, I linger over days and months themselves forever in each taste. |
How rare to be able to suggest taste so evocatively! Merv Daw |
Lament of the farm wife of Wu by Su Tung Po Rice this year ripens so late! We watch, but when will frost winds come? They come - with rain in bucketsful; the harrow sprouts mud, the sickle rusts. My tears are all cried out, but rain never ends; it hurts to see yellow stalks flattened in mud. We camped in a grass shelter a month by the fields; then it cleared and we reaped the grain, followed the wagon home, sweaty, shoulders sore, carting it to town - the price it fetched, you'd think we came with chaff. We sold the ox to pay taxes, broke up the roof for kindling; we'll get by for the time, but what of next year's hunger? Officials demand cash now - they won't take grain; the long northwest border tempts invaders. Wise men fill the court - why do things get worse? I'd be better off bride to the River Lord.* *this refers to the ancient custom of sacrificing a young girl each year as a "bride" to the River Lord, the god of the Yellow River. |
A serious lament, heartfelt and desperate! Farmers throughout the world would be able to identify with these words, and the bitterness expressed against the authorities who are unable or unwilling to help when it is needed. And every farmer needs help sometimes. Merv Daw |
"A TRAVELLER'S SONG" by Meng Jiao The thread in the hands of a fond-hearted mother makes clothes for the body of her wayward boy; carefully she sews and thoroughly she mends, dreading the delays that will keep him late from home. But how much love has the inch-long grass for three spring months of the light of the sun? |
Where is the boy travelling to? In what manner is he wayward? Perhaps he is a juvenile delinquent who is being taken away for imprisonment and hard labour. Despite his faults and her concerns about him, the mother devotes herself to the sewing and mending. She wonders how long it will be before he returns home. Are her labours of love appreciated by the son? Probably not. Does the grass appreciate the beneficial rays of the warm sun? Merv Daw |