Su Tung-p’o (Su Shih) is generally considered the Sung Dynasty’s greatest poet, and he may also be its greatest rivers-and-mountains poet. Su was at times quite influential in government, but as he opposed Wang An-shih’s radical policies, he spent most of his life in the provinces, including many years in exile. It was this life in the provinces that allowed Su such intimacy with China’s rivers and mountains, an intimacy so deep that Su took his literary name, Tung-p’o (“East Slope”), from the site where he lived for some years as a subsistence farmer: East-Slope Su.
But this intimacy was only the starting point for Su’s cultivation of wilderness. His poetics dramatically extended the interiorization of wilderness that Mei Yao-ch’en’s poetics began. Rather than consciousness giving shape to the world it encounters, Su’s poems enact consciousness wandering like water, the operant metaphor for Tao, taking shape according to what it encounters. Su’s mastery of this selfless poetics derives in part from his lifelong devotion to Ch’an, for Ch’an no-mind mirrors whatever it encounters with perfect clarity. But as with water, there is an inner nature to the poet which endures through all the transformations. This enduring inner nature returns us to the concept of li, or inner pattern, that was so important to Hsieh Ling-yün (see p. 20). And the different roles that li plays in these two poets summarize the transformation that had taken place in the rivers-and-mountains tradition.
For Hsieh Ling-yün, li was primarily manifested in the empirical world, and the goal of poetry was to render empty mind mirroring the vast dimensions of li in the rivers-and-mountains realm. But Su Tung-p’o’s poems weave together the empirical world and wandering thought, and for him both aspects are manifestations of li, the “inner pattern” of tzu-jan’s unfolding. Hence, wilderness is not simply out there in the mountains; it is always already here within us as well. Consciousness is itself already wild—so every gesture in a poem is wilderness, whether it is a turn of thought or a heron taking flight. And in spite of the considerable hardship and political frustration he suffered, this weaving of consciousness into the fabric of wilderness allowed Su a detachment and emotional balance, even lightheartedness, that has endured as part of the Chinese cultural legend.
Snowfall at South Creek: it’s the most priceless of things,
so I set out to see it before it melts. Hurrying my horse,
pushing through thickets alone, I watch for footprints,
and at dawn, I’m first across fresh snow on a red bridge!
Houses in shambles beyond belief, nowhere even to sleep,
I sit facing a village of starvation, voices mere murmurs.
Only the evening crows know my thoughts, startled into
flight, a thousand flakes tumbling through cold branches.
Black clouds, soaring ink, nearly blot out these mountains.
White raindrops, skipping pearls, skitter wildly into the boat,
then wind comes across furling earth, scatters them away,
and below Lake-View Tower, lakewater suddenly turns to sky.
Setting animals loose —fish and turtles— I’m an exile out here,
but no one owns waterlilies everywhere blooming, blooming.
This lake pillows mountains, starts them glancing up and down,
and my breezy boat wanders free, drifts with an aimless moon.
No mere forest recluse, I’m a recluse amid office routines,
mastering idleness that outlasts this idle moment or that.
We have no original home. So where do I go from here?
My old village is nothing like these mountains and lakes.
You can only hear a bell out beyond mist:
the monastery deep in mist is lost to sight.
Straw sandals wet with the dew of grasses,
a recluse wanders. Never coming to rest,
he’s simply an echo of mountaintop moon-
light coming and going night after night.
A light boat one lone leaf,
A startled swan two oars—
water and sky are pure clarity
reflecting deep. Waves smooth,
fish roil this duckweed mirror
and egrets dot misty shorelines.
We breeze past sandy streams,
frostfall streams cold,
moonlit streams aglow,
ridge above ridge like a painting,
bend beyond bend like a screen.
Here I think back to
Yen Tzu-ling’s empty old age,
lord and recluse one dream.
Renown’s empty then as now,
just mountains stretching away,
cloud mountains erratic,
dawn mountains green.
It’s gorgeous under clearing skies, a lake all billows and light,
and lovely too in rain, mountain colors among empty mists.
I can’t help comparing West Lake to Lady West, her makeup
just barely there or laid on thick: she’s exquisite either way.
Walking, I sing of ridgelines in white cloud,
and sitting, chant hymns to bamboo orchards.
Blossoms falling even without much breeze,
mountains half shadow under a fading sun:
who could make out the creek’s wildflowers
in all this dark, or trace their fragrant scents?
Whenever I see people who ply city markets,
I realize recluse sorrows don’t go very deep.
Hurrying our horses home last night, passing river dikes of sand,
we found kitchen smoke trailing fragrance out across ten miles,
and this morning we wander Blue-Ox Ridge, walking sticks in hand,
cliffwall cascades drumming the silence of a thousand mountains.
Don’t laugh at the old monk.
It’s true he’s deaf as dragons,
but at the end of this hundred-year life, who isn’t a pitiful sight?
And tomorrow morning, long after we’ve set out again for the city,
he’ll still be here among the white clouds of this poem on the wall.
It’s enough on this twisting mountain road to simply stop.
Clear water cascades thin down rock, startling admiration,
white cloud swells of itself across ridgelines east and west,
and who knows if the lake’s bright moon is above or below?
It’s the season black and yellow millet both begin to ripen,
oranges red and green, halfway into such lovely sweetness.
All this joy in our lives— what is it but heaven’s great gift?
Why confuse the children with all our fine explanations?
Mountains all azure green,
the river all boundless away,
Lone-Spires loom up out of the water, Greater beside Lesser,
and the road ends among fallen cliffwalls, gibbons and birds
scattered away, then nothing but trees towering up into sky.
Where’s that river-trader sailing from?
Its oar-songs rise and fall midstream in the river’s current
as a gentle breeze plays across shoreline sand, too faint to see.
And Lone-Spires always plunge and swell with passing boats:
majestic summits two slave-girls in mist,
they adorn themselves in dawn’s mirror.
That merchant there on the boat— he’s hardly mean and cruel.
Year before last, his housegirl married an awfully handsome man.
I was going wherever I happened to go,
giving myself over to whatever I met,
when incense drew my recluse steps to
mats spread open and pure, tea poured.
Light rain delayed my return, quiet
mystery outside windows lovelier still:
bowl-dome summits blocking out sun,
grasses and trees turned shadowy green.
Climbing quickly to the highest shrine,
I gazed out across whole Buddha-realms,
city walls radiant beneath Helmet Peak
and cloudy skies adrift in Tremor Lake.
Such joy in all this depth and clarity,
such freedom in wide-open mountains,
my recluse search wasn’t over when dusk
cook-smoke rose above distant villages.
Back home now, this day held in mind
shines bright and clear. I can’t sleep,
and those monks are sitting awake too,
sharing a lamp’s light in ch’an stillness.
This clear wind— what kind of thing is it?
Something you can love but never name,
it goes wherever it goes, like a noble sage,
fills grasses and trees with lovely sounds.
We set out wandering without any purpose,
and then, letting our lone boat drift askew,
we’re midstream on our backs, gazing into
sky and exchanging greetings with wind.
Offering a toast to water spread boundless
away, I savor this indifference we share,
and all the way home, along both rivers,
clouds and water shimmer into the night.
The great river flows east,
its current rinsing
all those gallant figures of a thousand ages away.
West of the ancient battlements,
people say, are
the Red Cliffs of young Chou from the Three Kingdoms:
a confusion of rock piercing sky
and wild waves pounding cliffwalls,
roiling up into a thousand swells of snow.
It’s like a painting, river and mountains
where how many august heroes once came together,
and I can almost see it back then, when Lord Chou was
here with lovely Ch’iao, his young new bride:
his bright and fearless presence
with feather fan and silk turban,
talking and laughing
as masts and hulls became flying ash and vanished smoke.
Surely spirits of that ancient time
roam here, smiling at all these feelings
and my hair already turning white.
Our life’s like dream,
so pour out the whole cup, offering to a river and its moon.
Forests end in mountain light, and bamboo hides walls.
A confusion of cicada cries, dry grasses, a small pond.
An occasional bird wings white through empty sky,
and delicate in scent, waterlilies shine across water.
Out beyond the village, along
ancient city walls, I’ll stroll
till dusk, staff in hand, then turn back in slant light.
Thanks to rain that came last night in the third watch,
I get another cool day in this drifting dream of a life.
A murmuring stream is the tongue broad and unending,
and what is mountain color if not the body pure and clear?
Eighty-four thousand gathas fill a passing night. But still,
once day has come, how could I explain them to anyone?
Seen from one side, it’s a ridgeline. From another, it’s a peak.
Distant or near, high or low— it never looks the same twice.
If I don’t recognize the contours of Thatch-Hut’s true face,
here’s why: I’m right here in the midst of these mountains!
Heartbreak above the river, a thousand peaks and summits
drift kingfisher-green in empty skies, like mist and cloud.
At these distances, you don’t know if it’s mountain or cloud
until mist thins away and clouds scatter. Then mountains
remain, filling sight with canyoned cliffwalls, azure-
green, valleys in cragged shadow,
and cascades tumbling a hundred Ways in headlong flight,
stitching forests and threading rock, seen and then unseen
as they plunge toward valley headwaters, and wild streams
growing calm where mountains open out and forests end.
A small bridge and country inn nestled against mountains,
travelers gradually work their way beyond towering trees,
and a fishing boat drifts, lone leaf on a river swallowing sky.
I can’t help asking where you found a painting like this,
bottomless beauty and clarity so lavish in exquisite detail:
I never dreamed there was a place in this human
realm so perfect, so lovely.
All I want is to go there, buy myself a few acres and settle in.
You can almost see them, can’t you? Those pure and remote
places in Wu-ch’ang and Fan-k’ou
where I lingered out five recluse years as Master East-Slope:
a river trembling in spring wind, isolate skies boundless,
and evening clouds furling rain back across lovely peaks,
crows gliding out of red maples to share a boatman’s night
and snow tumbling off tall pines startling his midday sleep.
Peach blossoms drift streamwater away right here in this
human realm, and Savage-Knoll wasn’t for spirit immortals.
Rivers and mountains all empty clarity: there’s a road in,
but caught in the dust of this world, I’ll never find it again.
Returning your painting, I’m taken by sighs of sad wonder.
I have old friends in those mountains,
and their poems keep calling me home.
Seven years wandering hither and yon: it’s too much to bear,
but here I ladle a first sweet taste of Hui Neng’s streamwater.
In dream it seems that I once went to live out beyond the sea,
but after a little wine, I’ve never come south of the Yangtze.
Water rinses my feet, an empty mountain stream murmuring,
and mist drifts into my robes, all droplets of kingfisher-green.
Who can let go of a mountain pheasant breaking into flight
across cliffwalls, blossom and rain and feathers trailing down?