Before you come, write me a letter:
To welcome you, don’t talk of distance,
I’ll go as far as the Long Wind Sands!
2
I remember, in my maiden days
I did not know the world and its ways;
Until I wed a man of Ch’ang-kan:
Now, on the sands, I wait for the winds …
And when in June the south winds are fair,
I think: Pa-ling, it’s soon you’ll be there;
September now, and west winds risen,
I wish you’ll leave the Yangtze Haven;
But, go or come, it’s ever sorrow
For when we meet, you part tomorrow:
You’ll make Hsiang-tan in how many days?
I dreamt I crossed the winds and the waves
Only last night, when the wind went mad
And tore down trees on the waterside
And waters raced where the dark wind ran
(Oh, where was then my travelling man?)
That we both rode dappled cloudy steeds
Eastward to bliss in Isles of Orchids:
A drake and duck among the green reeds,
Just as you’ve seen on a painted screen …
Pity me now, when I was fifteen
My face was pink as a peach’s skin:
Why did I wed a travelling man?
Waters my grief … my grief in the wind!
The Ballad of Yü-Chang
A Tartar wind blows on Tai horses
Thronging northward through the Lu-yang Gap:
Wu cavalry like snowflakes seaward
Riding westward know of no return,
Where as they ford the Shang-liao shallows
A yellow cloud stares faceless on them;
An old mother parting from her son
Calls on Heaven in the wild grasses,
The white horses round flags and banners,
Sadly she keens and clasps him to her:
‘ “Poor white poplar in the autumn moon,
Soon it was felled on the Yü-chang Hills” –
You were ever a peaceful scholar,
You were not trained to kill and capture!’
‘How can you weep for death in battle,
To free our Prince from stubborn bandits?
Given pure will, stones swallow feathers,
How can you speak of fearing dangers?
‘Our towered ships look like flying whales
Where the squalls race on Fallen Star Lake:
This song you sing – if you sing loudly,
Three armies’ hair will streak, too, with grey!’
Hard is the Journey
Gold vessels of fine wines,
thousands a gallon,
Jade dishes of rare meats,
costing more thousands,
I lay my chopsticks down,
no more can banquet,
And draw my sword and stare
wildly about me:
Ice bars my way to cross
the Yellow River,
Snows from dark skies to climb
the T’ai-hang Mountains!
At peace I drop a hook
into a brooklet,
At once I’m in a boat
but sailing sunward …
(Hard is the Journey,
Hard is the Journey,
So many turnings,
And now where am I?)
So when a breeze breaks waves,
bringing fair weather,
I set a cloud for sails,
cross the blue oceans!
Old Poem
Did Chuang Chou dream
he was the butterfly,
Or the butterfly
that it was Chuang Chou?
In one body’s
metamorphoses,
All is present,
infinite virtue!
You surely know
Fairyland’s oceans
Were made again
a limpid brooklet,
Down at Green Gate
the melon gardener
Once used to be
Marquis of Tung-ling?
Wealth and honour
You strive and strive,
but what do you seek?
TU FU (DU FU)
* * *
Lament by the Riverside
The old man from Shao-ling,
weeping inwardly,
Slips out by stealth in spring
and walks by Serpentine,
And on its riverside
sees the locked Palaces,
Young willows and new reeds
all green for nobody;
Where Rainbow Banners once
went through South Gardens,
Gardens and all therein
with merry faces:
First Lady of the Land,
Chao-yang’s chatelaine,
Sits always by her Lord
at board or carriage,
Carriage before which Maids
with bows and arrows
Are mounted on white steeds
with golden bridles;
They look up in the air
and loose together,
What laughter when a pair
of wings drop downward,
What bright eyes and white teeth,
but now where is she?
The ghosts of those by blood
defiled are homeless!
Where limpid River Wei’s
waters flow Eastward,
One goes, the other stays
and has no tidings:
Though Pity, all our hours,
weeping remembers,
These waters and these flowers
remain as ever;
But now brown dusk and horse-
men fill the City,
To gain the City’s South
I shall turn Northward!
From The Journey North: the Homecoming
Slowly, slowly we tramped country tracks,
With cottage smoke rarely on their winds:
Of those we met, many suffered wounds
Still oozing blood, and they moaned aloud!
I turned my head back to Feng-hsiang’s camp,
Flags still flying in the fading light;
Climbing onward in the cold hills’ folds,
Found here and there where cavalry once drank;
Till, far below, plains of Pin-chou sank,
Ching’s swift torrent tearing them in two;
And ‘Before us the wild tigers stood’,
Had rent these rocks every time they roared:
Autumn daisies had begun to nod
Among crushed stones waggons once had passed;
To the great sky then my spirit soared,
That secret things still could give me joy!
Mountain berries, tiny, trifling gems
Growing tangled among scattered nuts,
Were some scarlet, sands of cinnabar,
And others black, as if lacquer-splashed:
By rain and dew all of them were washed
And, sweet or sour, equally were fruits;
They brought to mind Peach-tree River’s springs,
And more I sighed for a life misspent!
Then I, downhill, spied Fu-chou far off
And rifts and rocks quickly disappeared
As I ran down to a river’s edge,
My poor servant coming far behind;
There we heard owls hoot from mulberry
Saw fieldmice sit upright by their holes;
At deep of night crossed a battlefield,
The chill moonlight shining on white bones
Guarding the Pass once a million men,
But how many ever left this Pass?
True to orders half the men in Ch’in
Here had perished and were alien ghosts!
I had fallen, too, in Tartar dust
But can return with my hair like flour,
; A year but past, to my simple home
And my own wife, in a hundred rags;
Who sees me, cried like the wind through trees
Weeps like the well sobbing underground
And then my son, pride of all my days,
With his face, too, whiter than the snows
Sees his father, turns his back to weep –
His sooty feet without socks or shoes;
Next by my couch two small daughters stand
In patched dresses scarcely to their knees
And the seawaves do not even meet
Where old bits of broidery are sewn;
Whilst the Serpent and the Purple Bird
On the short skirts both are upside-down
‘Though your father is not yet himself,
Suffers sickness and must rest some days,
How could his script not contain some stuffs
To give you all, keep you from the cold?
‘You’ll find there, too, powder, eyebrow black
Wrapped in the quilts, rather neatly packed.’
My wife’s thin face once again is fair,
Then the mad girls try to dress their hair:
Aping mother in her every act,
Morning make-up quickly smears their hands
Till in no time they have spread the rouge,
Fiercely painted great, enormous brows!
I am alive, with my children, home!
Seem to forget all that hunger, thirst:
These quick questions, as they tug my beard,
Who’d have the heart now to stop and scold?
Turning my mind to the Rebel Camp,
It’s sweet to have all this nonsense, noise …
The Visitor
North and South of our hut
spread the Spring waters,
And only flocks of gulls
daily visit us;
For guests our path is yet
unswept of petals,
To you our wattle gate
the first time opens:
Dishes so far from town
lack subtle flavours,
And wine is but the rough
a poor home offers;
If you agree, I’ll call
my ancient neighbour
Across the fence, to come
help us finish it!
Nine Short Songs: Wandering Breezes: 1
The withies near my door
are slender, supple
And like the waists of maids
of fifteen summers:
Who said, when morning came,
‘Nothing to mention’?
A mad wind has been here
and broke the longest!
Nine Short Songs: Wandering Breezes: 8
The catkins line the lanes,
making white carpets,
And leaves on lotus streams
spread like green money:
Pheasants root bamboo shoots,
nobody looking,
While ducklings on the sands
sleep by their mothers.
The Ballad of the Ancient Cypress
In front of K’ung-ming Shrine
stands an old cypress,
With branches like green bronze
and roots like granite;
Its hoary bark, far round,
glistens with raindrops,
And blueblack hues, high up,
blend in with Heaven’s:
Long ago Statesman, King
kept Time’s appointment,
But still this standing tree
has men’s devotion;
United with the mists
of ghostly gorges,
Through which the moon brings cold
from snowy mountains.
(I recall near my hut
on Brocade River
Another Shrine is shared
by King and Statesman
On civil, ancient plains
with stately cypress:
The paint there now is dim,
windows shutterless …)
Wide, wide though writhing roots
maintain its station,
Far, far in lonely heights,
many’s the tempest
When its hold is the strength
of Divine Wisdom
And straightness by the work
of the Creator …
Yet if a crumbling Hall
needed a rooftree,
Yoked herds would, turning heads,
balk at this mountain:
By art still unexposed
all have admired it;
But axe though not refused,
who could transport it?
How can its bitter core
deny ants lodging,
All the while scented boughs
give Phoenix housing?
Oh, ambitious unknowns,
sigh no more sadly:
Using timber as big
was never easy!
From a Height
The winds cut, clouds are high,
apes wail their sorrows,
The ait is fresh, sand white,
birds fly in circles;
On all sides fallen leaves
go rustling, rustling,
While ceaseless river waves
come rippling, rippling:
Autumn’s each faded mile
seems like my journey
To mount, alone and ill,
to this balcony;
Life’s failures and regrets
frosting my temples,
And wretched that I’ve had
to give up drinking.
Ballad on Seeing a Pupil of the Lady Kung-Sun Dance the Sword Mime
On the 19th day of the Tenth Month of Year II of Ta-li (15 November 767), I saw the Lady Li, Twelfth, of Lin-ying dance the Mime of the Sword at the Residence of Lieutenant-Governor Yüan Ch’i of K’uei Chou Prefecture; and both the subtlety of her interpretation and her virtuosity on points so impressed me that I asked of her, who had been her Teacher? She replied: ‘I was a Pupil of the great Lady Kung-sun!’
In Year V of K’ai-yüan (A.D. 717), when I was no more than a tiny boy, I remember being taken in Yü-yen City to see Kung-sun dance both this Mime and ‘The Astrakhan Hat’.
For her combination of flowing rhythms with vigorous attack, Kung-sun had stood alone even in an outstanding epoch. No member at all of the corps de ballet, of any rank whatever, either of the Sweet Spring-time Garden or of the Pear Garden Schools, could interpret such dances as she could; throughout the reign of His Late Majesty, Saintly in Peace and Godlike in War! But where now is that jadelike face, where are those brocade costumes? And I whiteheaded! And her Pupil here, too, no longer young!
Having learned of this Lady’s background, I came to realize that she had, in fact, been reproducing faithfully all the movements, all the little gestures, of her Teacher; and I was so stirred by that memory, that I decided to make a Ballad of the Mime of the Sword.
There was a time when the great calligrapher, Chang Hsü of Wu, famous for his wild running hand, had several opportunities of watching the Lady Kung-sun dance this Sword Mime (as it is danced in Turkestan); and he discovered, to his immense delight, that doing so had resulted in marked improvement in his own calligraphic art! From that, know the Lady Kung-sun!
A Great Dancer there was,
the Lady Kung-sun,
And her ‘Mime of the Sword’
made the World marvel!
Those, many as the hills,
who had watched breathless
Thought sky and earth themselves
moved to her rhythms:
As she flashed, the Nine Suns
fell to the Archer;
She flew, was a Sky God
on saddled dragon;
She came on, the pent storm
before it thunders;
And she ceased, the cold light
off frozen rivers!
Her red lips and pearl sleeves
&nb
sp; are long since resting,
But a dancer revives
of late their fragrance:
The Lady of Lin-ying
in White King city
Did the piece with such grace
and lively spirit
That I asked! Her reply
gave the good reason
And we thought of those times
with deepening sadness:
There had waited at Court
eight thousand Ladies
(With Kung-sun, from the first,
chief at the Sword Dance);
And fifty years had passed
(a palm turned downward)
While the winds, bringing dust,
darkened the Palace
And they scattered like mist
those in Pear Garden,
On whose visages still
its sun shines bleakly!
But now trees had clasped hands
at Golden Granary
And grass played its sad tunes
on Ch’ü-t’ang’s Ramparts,
For the swift pipes had ceased
playing to tortoiseshell;
The moon rose in the East,
joy brought great sorrow:
An old man knows no more
where he is going;
On these wild hills, footsore,
he will not hurry!
Night Thoughts Afloat
By bent grasses
in a gentle wind
Under straight mast