Composed for Her Husband: Three Poems, née Kong

[lnhammer]

In the middle of the Kaiyun Era (713-741), there was a military adjutant surnamed Zhang. His wife, whose maiden name was Kong, bore five children and then died. He later married a woman, maiden name Li, who was violently jealous and treated the five children oppressively, beating them daily. The five could not endure their hardship and wept before their mother’s grave. Suddenly their mother came out of her grave and consoled her children, weeping for a long time. Then using her white headscarf, she inscribed poems to Zhang and ordered the five to submit them to their father. The commander-in-chief heard of this, and decreed that Zhang’s current wife was certainly one in a hundred and banished her south of the Five Ranges, and Zhang gave up his duties.

1.
Not satisfied to follow the deceased …
I hide my every tear in a full headscarf.
’Tween death and life there is a separation—
So long since we have had a chance to meet.

2.
Inside the box are my now-spoiled cosmetics,
Preserved and given to that later person.
Within the Yellow Springs, they aren’t useful.
Resentment grows within the dirt of my grave.

3.
There are feelings inside men and women—
Heartless as well is my appointed lord.
Should you wish to know where guts feel like they’re slashed:
The bright moon shines on a solitary mound.

赠夫诗三首
作者：孔氏
〈开元中，有幽州衙将姓张者，妻孔氏，生五子而卒。后娶妻李氏，悍妒，虐遇五子，日鞭箠之。五子不堪其苦，哭于其母墓前，母忽于冢中出，抚其子，悲恸久之。因以白布巾题诗赠张，令五子呈其父。连帅上闻，敕李氏决一百，流岭南，张停所职。〉

[其一]
不忿成故人，
掩涕每盈巾。
死生今有隔，
相见永无因。

[其二]
匣里残妆粉，
留将与后人。
黄泉无用处，
恨作冢中尘。

[其三]
有意怀男女，
无情亦任君。
欲知肠断处，
明月照孤坟。


I’m not sure whether it’s the vagueness of somewhere in an almost forty-year span or the fairy-tale quality of the story, that this fails to qualify for the other chapter—given later even more fantastic stories with exact years, possibly the latter. Youzhou was a frontier prefecture-cum-commandary covering northern Hebei and western Liaoning, centered on Ji City, now a district of Beijing. (It’s where An Lushan started his rebellion.) The Five Ranges are the northern borders of Guangdong and Guangxi, or more generically the southernmost regions of the empire.

So here, “one in a hundred” means worst behaved, which makes me wonder what it meant in A Round-Dance.

---L.

Comments

[sartorias]

Wow, very sharp emotions there, with great images!

[lnhammer]

I know, right? One of the better ones in that regard.