An Old Friend, Dead in a Foreign Land, Zhang Ji of Jiangnan (300 Tang Shi #151)

[lnhammer]

Last year, in the campaign against the Yuezhi,
All of an army died beneath the walls.
All news was cut between that land and Han—
The living and the dead forever parted.
No one collected your discarded tent,
Your horse returned—I knew your broken banner.
I’d sacrifice, but you might be alive—
I’m weeping at this moment towards the horizon.

没蕃故人
前年伐月支，
城下没全师。
蕃汉断消息，
死生长别离。
无人收废帐，
归马识残旗。
欲祭疑君在，
天涯哭此时。

Well, THIS involved a rabbit-hole of history. The Yuezhi were a nomadic people of central Gansu who, early in the Han Dynasty, were soundly defeated by the Xiongnu and split into two branches—the larger migrated west through the Tarim Basin into Bactria, where they eventually became the Kushan Empire, while the smaller went south into Qinghai and Tibet, where they eventually merged into the Qiang and Tibetan peoples. The poet was from the later Tang, which means he’s using the name as a synonym for the Tibetan empire (the Kushans being long gone by then, and in any case no Tang expedition made it as far as Bactria). What city or fortress walls was fought under is unclear. Obscured in translation: the sacrifice is specifically a memorial ritual honoring the dead. Idiom: horizon is the “edge of heaven,” which is usually a vivid image but it didn’t seem to fit here, tonally. (Author credit given this way to distinguish him from the author of #273, also pronounced Zhang Ji, though with a different tone.)

---L.

Comments

[sartorias]

Wow, that one is quite specific, as these go. Very evocative images in the middle there.

[lnhammer]

Yeah, this is clearly a specific and personally felt situation. I wonder whether the tent and banner are standard images, but they're concrete enough it wouldn't matter if they were.

[lnhammer]

Also, that "right now, at this very moment" I am weeping -- that's much more immediate than usual.