Larry's Pretty Good Poetry Journal

ETA: Fixed text mangled by hasty editing on phone.

The girl Luo Fu in the land of Qin
Picks mulberry leaves by the blue water:
Her plain white hands above green branches,
Rosy complexion fresh in the sun.
"The silkworms hunger—this one must go—
Your five fine horses must not tarry here.”

春歌
秦地罗敷女，
采桑绿水边。
素手青条上，
红妆白日鲜。
蚕饥妾欲去，
五马莫留连。

The first of a set of four poems. Ziye (“Lady Midnight”) is the name given to a style of poetry supposedly originated by a Southern Jin Dynasty singer (or possibly courtesan). The traditional original collection was organized in four seasonal sections, and so most imitations were too.

Qin roughly corresponds to modern Shaanxi province—and while in ancient times, it was considered the periphery of the Chinese heartland by the central Yellow River plains, it includes the Tang capital region of Chang’an, so not necessarily as rustic as the connotation suggests. Mulberry leaves were and still are fed to silkworms in the spring. A five-horse carriage was used only by high-ranked officials.

—L.

Seeing the place my deceased mother supported, the lonely feelings I bear multiply, making me dismal, as I recall my longings for her. Thus I composed [this] to express my sorrow:

I tour with his highness the restricted yard,
Granted leave from the Orchid Gate.
The clouds recline, concealing peaks;
A rose sky lowers, pierced by banners;
Sun Palace links to stream-side dwellings
And Moon Hall leads to cliff-top doors;
Golden wheels spin above golden earth,
In incensed halls sweep incensed robes;
Bells sound in a light puff of wind,
Pennons flap in a thin mist of drizzle.
Once these met a divine fire --
The mountains red above the fields.
Now Flower Terrace is half a shadow,
Though Lotus Tower retains its glory.
Truly we rely on good men of power
To help the Almighty perfect the world:
Compassion's karma draws up good fortune.
But with this thought I exhaust my refuge:
A branch in the wind cannot be still --
For how could blood tears bring her back?

从驾幸少林寺
睹先妃营建之所，倍切茕衿，逾凄远慕，聊题既事，用述悲怀。
陪銮游禁苑
侍赏出兰闱
云偃攒峰盖
霞低插浪旗
日宫疏涧户
月殿启岩扉
金轮转金地
香阁曳香衣
铎吟轻吹发
幡摇薄雾霏
昔遇焚芝火
山红连野飞
花台无半影
莲塔有全辉
实赖能仁力
攸资善世威
慈缘兴福绪
于此罄归依
风枝不可静
泣血竟何追

Wu Zetian wrote this, her most personal poem to survive, sometime between 670 (when her mother died) and 690 (when Zetian became emperor regnant). The "her" in the last line is supplied from the context of the headnote. The Orchid Gate is the entrance to the imperial women's quarters. And yes, this is the famous Shaolin Temple, which is on Mt. Song somewhat downstream the Yellow River from the Chang'an capital.

Lost in translation: In the first line, 銮 (luán) is the most interesting metonymy for the emperor I've met so far -- it's literally the special bells on the horses that pull the imperial carriage. The "divine" fire is literally a type of tree mushroom supposed to have divine healing powers -- er, yeah, IDK. (Source)

---L.

Cassia wine to greet a god’s child,
Boneset bestowed upon a beauty,
Pepper offered on a jade mat:
May you descend, O Lord of Clouds!

    Cinnabar thorns hang from his clothes—
    Incense detains a passing guest,
    Good fortune suited to using a cauldron:
    May you, my lord, descend and take these.

椒园

桂尊迎帝子，
杜若赠佳人。
椒浆奠瑶席，
欲下云中君。

    丹刺罥人衣，
    芳香留过客。
    幸堪调鼎用，
    愿君垂采摘。

This? —this poem of Wang’s is not a Buddhist poem, which just goes to show Wang Wei was not only a Buddhist. Specifically, his first three lines pastiche lines from the “Nine Songs” section of Songs of Chu, which are shamanistic rapsodies from 900 years before. The structure of approach, departure, and yearning from those songs echoes that of Wang’s relationship to both the natural world and his friend from earlier in the collection, and the historical reference makes it part of the same frame as his #1, 2 and 19. Pei, somewhat typically, elaborates on only the surface layer here (my hunch is his cryptic first line is also alluding to from “Nine Songs,” but I haven’t been able to confirm that, nor that I’m actually reading it correctly). FWIW, the pepper is the same peppery prickly-ash tree (Zanthoxylum ailanthoides) as Pei’s #7.

And that, he said, is the end of that collection. Whew!

---L.

At the ends of branches, lotus flowers
Send forth red buds amid the mountains.
Silent brook mouth, without people—
Disordered, they open and then scatter.

    Green dike, spring grasses, all combined ...
    Descendent of kings, stop this joking.
    This bitter scene, with flattened flowers—
    And you, confusing them with lotus.

辛夷坞

木末芙蓉花，
山中发红萼。
涧户寂无人，
纷纷开且落。

    绿堤春草合，
    王孙自留玩。
    况有辛夷花，
    色与芙蓉乱。

Wang returns to earlier causes of melancholy, but now without explicit moping. The flowers of Magnolia liliiflora do somewhat resemble lotus blooms, and Wang deliberately confuses them in an echo of his friend’s arrival in #9. And Pei’s response? —that’s not just mocking, but outright mockery.

—L.

North Cottage, north of the lake waters:
Varied trees shadow its red door.
Twisting, winding, the south river waters—
Brightness cut off by straight green woods.

    Below North Cottage at South Mountain,
    Joined walls that overlook Yi Lake:
    Though I want to gather firewood,
    In a small boat I leave the rushes.

北垞

北垞湖水北，
杂树暎朱阑。
逶迤南川水，
明灭青林端。

    南山北垞下，
    结宇临欹湖。
    每欲采樵去，
    扁舟出菰蒲。

Wang is again observing nature, without interacting with people. Lost in translation: the “red door” is technically “cinnabar/vermilion door-screen.” (I am, here, feeling the restriction of my chosen meter.) Pei’s walls are those of rooms, so house walls rather than the outer wall of a yard.

---L.

He rambled the South on impulse, without strong precautions—
Who would, in these nine-layer walls, admonish him?
In spring winds, all the nation cut up royal brocades:
Half made into saddle mud-guards, half into sails.

隋宫
乘兴南游不戒严，
九重谁省谏书函。
春风举国裁宫锦，
半作障泥半作帆。

The Sui Emperor Yang had a lavish palace in Yangzhou. He was, to put it mildly, extravagant and self-indulgent: when he traveled around the region, abducting women, he didn’t like an encumbering entourage, and more than once criticism by officials was met with death sentences.

—L.

The Mount Song clouds and trees of Qin are far apart—
So remote, it took two carp to send your letter.
Don’t ask about my visiting Liang Park, old friend:
I’m lying ill by Mao Tomb in the autumn rains.

寄令狐郎中
嵩云秦树久离居，
双鲤迢迢一纸书。
休问梁园旧宾客，
茂陵秋雨病相如。

Textual issue: My base text ends the second line with 笔 (bǐ), which doesn’t come close to rhyming in any historical pronunciation, giving the phrase “one paper [and] brush.” The overwhelming majority of texts I’ve looked at, including his collected poems, ends instead with 书 (shū), a much better rhyme but giving the more prosaic “a single letter.” The overall sense isn’t affected—paper & brush clearly would stand in for a written message—so because of the form, with much hesitation I’m accepting the common reading. (It may be time to change my base text…)

The recipient (who has one of those rare two-character surnames) was a friend and influential official. Mt Song is near Luoyang and the former kingdom of Qin included Chang’an—so they together stand for those two cities. (They aren’t actually all that far apart.) A carp was a standard symbol for a messenger with a letter (or sometimes the letter itself). Liang Garden was a famous estate in what’s now Shangqiu, Henan, east of Luoyang, and Mao Tomb is that of Han Emperor Wu, about 25 miles west of Chang’an. The illness named is one with symptoms similar to diabetes.

—L.

Drink daily from this Gold-Dust Spring:
Stay young for more than a thousand years.
Green phoenix guarding the patterned dragon—
Feather adorned, attend the Jade Emperor.

    Winding and still, clear and unflowing:
    Gold, jade—as if you can gather them.
    Greeting the dawn, I drank pure splendor—
    My sole affair, my morning draft.

金屑泉

日饮金屑泉，
少当千余岁。
翠凤翊文螭，
羽节朝玉帝。

    萦渟澹不流，
    金碧如可拾。
    迎晨含素华，
    独往事朝汲。

Wang uses 朝 (read cháo) to mean “attend [a ruler’s] court” while Pei uses it (read zhāo) to mean “morning,” as if mocking Wang’s high-falutin’ poem. Wang’s dragon is specifically one so young it hasn’t yet grown horns, and according to one annotation his feathers are part of Taoist regalia.

---L.

Through mountain windows, roaming jade women;
As the stream’s door, facing jasper peaks.
On the cliff top, two phoenixes soar;
In the pool’s heart, nine dragons lie.
Amidst the wine float bamboo leaves;
Above the cups place lotus flowers:
Thus I confirm this house’s mountain gift—
But wind’s still blowing through the pines.

游九龙潭
山窗游玉女，
涧户对琼峰。
岩顶翔双凤，
潭心倒九龙。
酒中浮竹叶，
杯上写芙蓉。
故验家山赏，
惟有风入松。

The occasion was a pleasure trip by the Empress and her daughter, Princess Taiping (who appear in the poem as the phoenixes—the jade women would be their entourage). Wordplay: when window and door (from the first two lines) are put together, they are an idiom for house (as in line seven). Imageplay: The leaves in the wine match the appearance of the dragons in the pool (this seems to be the associative connection linking the two middle couplets). The shift in focus from wide to narrow to interior is striking, especially with that effectively introspective last line.

(I need to polish this a bit more with an eye toward how much to bring out the strong semantic parallels of the first six lines, but this is good enough for now.)

---L.

Beautiful trees separately gathered:
Inverted images in clear ripples.
They didn’t learn from the royal moat—
Those sadden on parting in spring winds.

    The water’s reflections appear as one—
    A puff, and they scatter like silk threads.
    Joined shadows already have the earth:
    Who evades time in that clay house?

柳浪

分行接绮树，
倒影入清漪。
不学御沟上，
春风伤别离。

    映池同一色，
    逐吹散如丝。
    结阴既得地，
    何谢陶家时。

Still at the lake. The italics in Wang’s last line are because he’s apparently making a contrast with the current autumn season. Because willow (柳: modern pronunciation liǔ) sounds like stay (留: modern liú), it was the custom when seeing someone off to give the departer a willow branch. There was a pedestrian walkway on the bank of the moat around the imperial palace in Chang’an, beneath many willows, and so a site for many farewells during the season of official postings. Pei seems to be saying, “Sadness upon parting? I’ll give you a reason to be sad.” (That said, that last line still needs work.)

---L.