PART TWO
Poetry from the End of the Han (220 C.E.) to the T’ang (618 C.E.)
Introduction to Poetry from the End of the Han to the T’ang
THE HAN FELL NOT SO MUCH WITH A BANG AS WITH A clatter: first crumbling into “The Three Kingdoms” (whence a folk novel The Romance of the Three Kingdoms that is still to be recommended, for both entertainment and education about early China). Then it shattered into seven or so little dynasties . . . imagine, each with its totally serious pomp and circumstance . . . in the North, and, in the South, first into sixteen kingdoms, and then at last a dynasty that managed to last over a hundred years. Then four more little kingdoms, before, finally, a true unification, under the Sui Dynasty, that lasted twenty-nine years: and then, at last, to the T’ang. At every level people made what lives they could. At the top some luxury remained, and among our poets we find that, like St. Francis, people of good will suffered shame for their share of that luxury. Four horsemen rode: war itself killed soldier and refugee alike. There was famine and pestilence for those who waited at home, and death, for multitudes from many causes. Often it must have seemed a liberation. And through these times history proceeded: Buddhism, introduced to the upper levels of society only in the final century of the Han, saw its holy texts translated, temples and monasteries established and growing, while the majority of ordinary folks let the more magical forms of Buddhism join Taoism as a source of religious solace, and the elite joined other forms of Buddhism to their Confucianism and Taoism in an attempt to create ways of living fully, honestly, completely even in such times. This Age was not so long as the European Dark Ages, and maybe even not so dark. It was nonetheless one to prove the universal verity of the Western saying that bad times make great art. There was plenty of empty court poetry, but some of the best of traditional Chinese poetry was written during this period as well.
The two anonymous poems that begin the Han-to-T’ang selections show two very different attitudes, both clearly alive among the Chinese of the period. “Fought South of the City Wall” is very much a warrior’s poem. Although China’s philosophies do indeed honor a pacifistic stance, neither Confucians nor Taoists advise accepting defeat. Thus China is not without her martial heroes and heroines. “Going This Path,” on the other hand, does honor the pacifists’ Way. The pun on Tao, Way, is present in the original of the latter poem.
Juan Chi (210–263) was the most important of the Taoist eccentrics known as the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove. His best friend, Hsi K’ang (223–262), also a fine poet, was a lutenist and the first writer on music theory and practice. He was executed for showing less than abject obeisance to his disreputable emperor. All of the Sages, including the prototypical “drunken master” Liu Ling, were political and social critics, hiding their very ethical outrage behind a veil of eccentric behavior. Hsi K’ang was simply less subtle than his fellow sages. Juan Chi’s poems in this anthology are drawn from his eighty-two poem set, Yung Huai Shih (Songs of My Heart’s Ideals).
T’ao Ch’ien (365–427), originally named Yuan-ming (Bright and Clear), changed his personal name to Ch’ien (“sunken” or “hidden”) in response to the fall of the Eastern Chin (or Tsin) dynasty, under which he had served in several official capacities. Complicating the issue was the fact that he had also served the general who was the eventual usurper of the Chin throne. Known traditionally as a nature-loving, quietistic Taoist, a hermit farmer who was a lover of little children and of large quantities of wine, the actual man was a complex and very modern one, a great poet whose ethical standards were as high as his artistic ones. He was influenced by the poetry of Juan Chi and by the works of the Taoist relativistic philosopher-sage and humorist Chuang Tzu to write poems that expressed his own strengths and weaknesses honestly, giving him a solid stance from which to criticize his times. After his death he was without a doubt the most quoted and alluded to of all traditional poets, for at least a thousand years.
Hsieh Ling-yun (385–433) was a member of an aristocratic family that survived the Han-to-T’ang dark ages almost unscathed. His poetry is characterized by careful word choice. Its characters and phrases are packed with meaning from the inside (etymologically) to the outside (allusions and textual reference). These meaning-packed lines sometimes show a whiff of aristocratic arrogance (the rich often have such bad manners!), but they betray a hint or two of wistful, even rueful, self-knowledge as well. On the basis of his literary work, he was a minor official poet, only to die in a court mutiny.
Pao Chao (414–466) did not suffer from the disadvantage of high birth. His poetry reveals deep moral courage and strength of character. A man who could speak honestly about himself without shame, and share pain without instilling melancholy, Pao Chao was widely quoted in the T’ang, and afterward his reputation continued to grow.
Lady Tzu-ye (5th century?) is a name attached to a set of poems that are clearly anonymous folk songs. Their subject matter, though occasionally masked in euphemisms, is sexual love, and they mark the first time since the Shih Ching that this important facet of human existence gets its due in traditional Chinese poetry. Though the poems are actually pretty clearly from a number of hands, the figure of Lady Tzu-ye, a courtesan or female entertainer, was created by tradition to honor the otherwise anonymous creativity to be found in these poems. It is wonderful to be able to close this dark episode of Chinese history, brightened hitherto only by the brilliance of its suffering poets, with celebration. Many of the original poets’ euphemisms have lost their meanings in the mist of time. I invite you to try to recover them.
Fought South of the City Wall
Fought south of the city wall:
died north of the ramparts.
Dead on the battleground, unburied:
the crows will feed.
“Say to the crows for us:
enjoy a warrior.
Dead on the battleground,
our honor will not bury us,
nor will even our rotting flesh flee.
The waters, deep and rushing, rushing,
among the dark reeds the sun’s fallen.
Warriors from horseback; dead in the battle:
warhorses milling and neighing.
We tore up the bridges to build up the barricades,
now no way to flee, north or south:
The ripe grain unreaped; what’s for our Lord to eat?
And if he want loyal ministers, whence shall they come?”
“I think of you as my fine ministers:
fine ministers, it is right to rank you so:
Into the dawn light you sallied forth.
With the sunset you did not return.”
Going This Path
Going this path, I stumble across the mountain’s feet.
My horse gnaws the cypress bark.
I chew the cypress resin.
It doesn’t satisfy.
It stays
the pain.
1
Midnight, can’t sleep,
so I sit up, to try my lute.
Curtains catch moonlight
the pure breeze flutters my sleeves.
A lone swan cries: in wilderness,
and flies, crying, to the north woods,
turning, and turning, and gyring there,
sees what?
Loneliness; to be alone so
wounds heart and mind.
14
Autumn, I know, I fear, it will be cold.
In my bed, I listen to the crickets
beyond my curtains, and I am afraid,
saddened by these little things of nature’s.
Gentle, the breeze at my silken sleeves; the moon: bright as ice . . .
The rooster, in the treetop, crows.
I’ll saddle my horse: it’s time to go home.
18
The sun’s a chariot in the southeast.
The driver driving, racing, on toward dusk.
Light lingers on the four seas,
then, the sudden darkness reigns.
Dawns, the sun bathes at Hsien-chih.
Evenings, the banks of Meng River welcome the light.
Who yet doubts that brilliant scholars,
enlightened though they be,
once dead, will stay so?
See the peach and the plum in blossom?
Which of them will bloom forever?
A prince among men, can even he
stand free of change?
Alas, he is one of, not one with, the All.
I stand here, and gaze upon
the evergreens of Mount Chingshan.
They are comfort, solace, for my heart.
36
Life’s hard, some say . . .
Rambling, free, I could run out my days,
here, in my front court, among
these flowering trees, and
in their shade, so lithe and light,
my mind might ponder the
formless void.
But pacing there I find my heart turns to friends and loved ones,
and all’s a sudden dark again.
So I send these poems by the eastward-winging birds . . .
Purging my heart of all the words
that could give form to sadness.
54
Boasting, even gossiping, you can purge yourself of anger.
But lie, and let it lie, and you’ll end up racked with fears . . .
So I climb Puchou Ridge heading northwest, then turn
and look back on the Great Forest of Teng,
hills like bumps on the mountains’ backs.
In the old tale ten thousand lifetimes
pass in a dream as water comes to a boil:
a thousand years of risings and fallings.
Who call jade and common stones the same?
I find that I can’t keep from weeping.
69
Just to go among men is difficult for me:
finding a true friend’s near a miracle.
When the way is hard, people get tetchy:
that puts the jewel out of reach.
Some hunger to sup from a king’s high table:
a bowl of rice is enough for me.
Shall I snatch part of thine to add to my portion?
I’d suffer no less, then, than thee . . .
Advice I might offer’d be taken awry:
I’ll keep my mouth shut, save my breath.
73
Need I learn to fly on horseback?
Tung-ye Chi, fulfilling a fool duke’s orders:
even his fine chariot team broke down.
A fish knows to swim deep where a hook’s set shallow;
birds, to fly high by a net. I’ll drift
with the flow in my skiff, into the endless ocean.
Fish will blow a blanket of bubbles in drying mud
to help each other stay out of the dried-fish shop,
but they’d far rather swim far apart in the sea.
Do you spend much time on making up?
I just try to keep my face clean.
Gods and goddesses? They may indeed live long,
locked in endless trances.
After the Ancients
Spring’s second moon brings timely rain;
thunder rumbles in the east.
Insects stir from secret places.
Grasses, trees and brush spread green.
Wings! Wings everywhere! The new come swallows,
pairs and pairs, within my home
find last year’s nest still here,
and come, together, to rest, again.
Since you and I were parted, I have
watched the garden gate pile up in leaves.
My heart’s no rolling stone.
And yours?
Do you love me still?
From Drinking Wine, Twenty Poems
2
Success and failure? No known address.
This or that goes on, depending on the other.
And who can say if Milord Shao was happier
ruling a city, or sacked, his excellent melon patch?
Hot, cold, summer, winter: don’t they alternate?
Mayn’t a man’s way wander on just so?
Yes, those who “get there” know their opportunities . . .
have learned to untie the knots of knowledge.
But was it the notable or the notorious that our Sage spoke of?
The latter he called opportunists. Those who get there, doubtless,
know doubt nor care no more. Yet, doubt you not, nor do dead generals,
who plotted carefully at what seemed opportune,
and knew naught, right or wrong.
If, of a sudden, you’re offered fine wine,
let the sun sink. Enjoy it.
5
I built my hut within man’s sphere
and yet can’t hear the proclamations of his bustling streets.
You may ask how this can be . . .
When the heart’s afar, its place is all its own.
I pluck chrysanthemums in autumn’s light beneath my eastern hedge,
and gaze toward the mountain, south
where alchemists brew long-life’s elixir,
where good farmers go at last to rest,
the distance ever burning in my heart.
In the mountain air: there is good omen of an eve,
as birds fly home, together.
In this, in all of these, there is true meaning . . .
In lusting to find the words . . .
the words’ heart’s lost.
9
Pure bright, blue, beginning.
Morning, comes a knock.
Ear hears king’s summons at the door,
and thus I rush, my shirt on inside-out,
to see unbarred that door, myself.
And who, good man, are you?
It’s just some well-intentioned farmer come,
with jug of homebrew held like hat in hand
to pay a call on me because he thinks he sees
me cunning as a child, or, maybe, out of time.
“Your rags, your matted thatch,” he says,
“is not your things as makes your scholar’s lofty perch!
Your whole wide world of gentlefolks agrees!
Won’t you too come to help them stir the mud?”
“Deep thanks, old man, for all your thoughts
yet by my nature I must leave alone
that whole wide world, its words (and will).
Though one may surely learn to hold the reins,
to drive the “cart of state,” to strive to go
against one’s grain is just illusion . . .
come, let us strive to find some joy in sharing of this wine:
my cart will not turn back again.”
11
Confucius loved Yen Hui,
would cite no other, not himself, as good.
Of rustic Jung, he said, “This man knows Tao.”
Often empty, the one died young.
Always hungry, the other was, even to old age.
Thus they left their names to us:
a life of bitterness, sweet ancient, noble men.
Gone, in death, what was it that they’d known?
To be titled for your nature’s good, enough?
Then there was that old man Yang,
who valued his body more than gold,
and spent it, leaving nothing to be buried with.
And is it wrong to go naked to the grave?
Perhaps a man, in time, may get beyond the clothing
of conventional ideas . . .
14
My real friends, Ancient Sages all, approve of what I go for.
Jugs in hand, together, they’re here, and perfect.
Brushing up the needles, we sit beneath pines: long-lived, evergreen.
A couple of cups, and we’re drunk again
(starting over, got to get it right this time).
Fathers, elders: random, chaotic talk,
even the horn bowl’s lost the order of pouring.
Unconscious, knowing only there’s an I, or
is it unenlightened, that’s what I don’t know?
It might be peaceful to find things of value
but no, I can’t know even this for sure.
When the heart’s distant, longing, it’s at a loss
for what to keep or where to stay.
Wine puts me right here: so subtle, that flavor.
16
I was a youth who never spoke about
nor sought connection with the
world of men.
Afloat on the warm bosom of a sea of scripture,
innocent, or arrogant, and without doubt,
at forty, or fifty, sunk, stayed, weaned,
no thing done, or won, unknown.
Finally, firmly, I found virtues in adversity
where, innocent or arrogant, I had found none before.
I found hunger, cold: my found now is all
that changes. This rude hut
is well connected with the heartless
wind, heedless court sunk in imperious weeds,
my ragged wretched robes: I carry on
through endless night.
Morning, but the cock won’t crow.
(Thou needst not go.)
No man knows me, no man who offers wine.
Finally, firmly, I hide my feelings, here.
17
The orchid, hidden, growing, in the court
swallowed in weeds waits wind, clear wind,
pure wind, stripping, burning, bends them low,
and the orchid’s seen, above the weedy artemisia.
Aimless motion, the old path lost . . .
If I could keep the way, and bear the truth
I might get through.
When I awake, I’ll memorize returning.
When the birds are all gone, a good bow’s wasted.
18
Yang Hsiung, cloud, philosopher, fled court for home,
heart set on meat and wine, but no way to get it,
save, from time to time to
meet, and drink the leas of
Servants of the State,
who came to leave their questions all behind.
So the goblet came, and so he left it,
empty. And he found no queries
beyond this solution. Yet
sometimes he would not speak . . .
When but when they asked of sack
and carnage? The good man
answers simply, with his heart. How could he not know
the time to stay,
the Way to go?
Best Option: Stopping Wine
He loves to play beyond the city wall, at home.
He rambles to the mountain’s top to idle there alone.
He strives to pass his time beneath shade trees,
or strolls to peaceful music by his gate.
To pluck garden mallows to pleasure the palate,
to have babies to play with: there are
such simple things to please a simple heart . . .
All his life his wine’s been his topic . . .
Plots to put it aside now: what pleasure would be left?
When he stops in the evening he finds he can’t sleep.
If he stops in the morning, he dares not arise,
first opines he can do it, and then once again,
quick bows to panic when his heart starts to pound.
Seldom has he ever felt desires to punish himself,
and therefore found few reasons to push back his cup.
This day he does, at last, oppugn those errant arguments,
and at dawn’s skies’ first opening he lays by the jug.
Beginning today at least options appear:
to go perhaps to Paradise, with Spirits to ponder or play,
immune, as time races to plunder the beauty of day . . .
And there, for a thousand forevers to part with the sorrows of stopping.
In Imitation of Old Poems
Someone’s come far, far, with the words of the sentence,
the sword of its execution.
A hundred feet up the tower: the view: clean cut, flesh of kings
lost, flowing or flown, off, or, anyway, hidden in the leaves in
all directions, perished.
Sunsets, the tower’s home for clouds; mornings, the birds
fly from it. My eyes brim with mountains,
with rivers, flat, plain: alone, lost again
laid waste by the waters, lost in the leaves.
Another season, another time, merit named its
warriors, hearts given up on peace, done with
leisure: they strove upon this field.
One: Sunup, sundown: a hundred harvests. Done.
They’ve gone home together now, drawn on
by martial dirge to Northern Wastes,
there where many nobles lie.
(Birds flee, fish dive deep at that sound.)
The cemetery trees, a hundred pines, and cypress, ever green
until this moment, now, cut down by simple men for fuel.
See? Old mounds do obeisance as the new mounds rise.
Ruined foundations know no masters now. Where
do their shadows wander? Flowers: glory.
Surely swords and halberds found nobility:
surely they’ve won all the earth
a snail’s horns would shade.
Surely, too, (or it might seem)
I might feel pity for their wounds.
Moving House
Once upon a time: I wanted to go live in South Village,
not because of some augery, it was just that I’d heard
good simple men lived there, folks I’d have
been happy to spend time with, mornings and evenings.
Many years, that was what I wanted; now,
today, it’s what, hereafter, I shall be known for . . .
Well, a simple man’s house doesn’t have to be big,
all I’ll need is a bed, and a mat on a floor is a bed.
Then my neighbors will come visiting, and
we’ll talk, we can argue, happy, over other times,
we’ll read scarce bits of honest histories, enjoying them, together.
We’ll settle all the old world’s questions, together.
Passing My Estate at Shih-ning
Bobbed-haired, irksome child, I longed to grow Upright,
and find fame for it . . .
But then I found things of this world,
and they held me.
Only yesterday, or it seems so, I let such
honorable ambition go . . .
two dozen years, in fact, the then to now.
Blackened, reamed, worn as a knight would
never be, my nature sullied, I’d betrayed,
forgotten, even the bright broad land itself.
Worn, wasted, wearied, I’m shamed now
by anything upright and firm . . .
But stupidity and sickness may yet
be my salvation: these have brought me here again
to the very bosom of Silence.
I am empowered by the emblem of a magistrate
to rule “the Blue Sea,” but first I’ll play king
of my own old hills a while.
Hiking the high places, and the low,
crossing, tracing a winding stream to its source.
Here are cliffs, crags and peaks, and
ranks of ridges, ranges,
like rock islets and bits of sandbar in sea surge.
White clouds wrap dark boulders.
Green bamboo writhe in shamanesses’ dances by the stream.
I’ll rethatch the roof with the view
of the river’s twistings, and raise up
a tower for viewing the peaks.
Then I’ll wave farewell to my village folk:
“A three-year term, then I’ll return . . .
Plant me graveyard evergreens, and
coffin-wood trees. These
are my last wishes.”
Written to Swap, at Tung-yang Creek
I
Pretty! Some man’s wife, for sure,
washing those so-white feet in the stream.
And the moon, bright among the clouds:
far, so far away; just out of reach.
II
Pretty! He’s some girl’s husband . . .
Come on a white skiff adrift on the stream.
“Pray, what be thy purpose here,
as the clouds slip over the moon . . .?”
Written in Imitation of the Song Called “Hard Traveling”
I
Scribing lines as it goes, water poured on flat ground
runs east or west or north or south as it flows:
human life is also fated. Why then sigh
as you go forward, or melancholy, sit?
Pour wine to fete thyself, raise up the cup
and do not deign to sing “Hard Traveling.”
Heart-and-mind; they are not wood-and-stone . . .
How might one not bear pain? And if I know
fear as I stagger on, I’ll never deign to speak it.
II
Sir, don’t you see? The grass along the riverbank?
In the winter it withers, come spring it springs again
to line all pathways.
Today the sun is set, completely gone, already.
Tomorrow morning won’t it rise again?
But when in time shall my way be just so . . .
Once gone, I’m gone forever, banished to the Yellow Springs, below.
In human life the woes are many and the satisfactions few:
so seize the moment when you’re in your prime.
If one of us achieve a noble aim, the rest may take joy in it.
But best keep cash for wine on the bedside table.
Whether my deeds be scribed on bamboo and silk
is surely beyond my knowing.
Life or death, honor or shame? These I leave to High Heaven.
Songs of Tzu-ye (Lady Midnight’s Songs) (5th century?)
Midnight’s Song
Nights are long when she can’t sleep;
the bright moon glitters like a bangle.
She thinks she hears an answer to a prayer . . .
“Yes . . . ,” she murmurs, into empty air.
Quatrains from “Tzu-ye Songs for the Four Seasons”
Spring
Spring groves’ blossoms bewitch.
Spring birds sing the heart of sadness.
Spring breeze brings even more of that certain feeling:
blowing my gauzy skirt awry.
The plum blossoms have fallen: they’re gone,
and the willows, wind’s taken them too.
Here I am in the spring of my years!
And no man’s thought of taking me.
Summer
Yes, I’m positively thrashing in these sheets . . .
Too hot even for mosquito netting!
But wait, wait a moment, my dear young friend . . .
I haven’t even made my face up yet.
Mornings, I climb to the cool of the tower.
Evenings, nap among the orchids by the pool.
In the moonlight, I sit face to face with some flower of manhood,
night after night, gathering the lotus seed.
Heat at the full, silence, no breath of breeze,
even as the summer clouds rise before the setting sun.
Hand in hand, where the leaves are thickest,
we will float my melons, sink your ripe plums.