Life of a Chinese Poet

In his youth, as he recalled, the Great Causeway of the Heavens

       and Earth trembled

and the stars were spilled like dust, at the overthrow of a dynasty.

It could seem that he was old from birth, who was always saying

        goodbye.

During eighty years he wrote five thousand poems, in a rhyming

        prose or as songs for the lute.

Otherwise, his life was uneventful, except for the always-

        remembered love that he had for a certain courtesan.

His mother refused to let him marry this girl, who was called

        Scented Jade,

and soon afterwards he was ordered as a minor clerk to the far

        province of Fukien.

There he discovered, at times, the consolation of nature — its

        vividness, and its unthinkable reality.

He writes of the wild mountains, that were as sharp and glittering

        as dogs’ teeth,

and that could be seen from among the hanging flowers of the

        white lanes.

The river there he also admired, which he says was like the great

        dragon of Ch’i

that turned upon itself in all the twelve directions, while subduing

        the five elements.

It was his dream from youth to take arms against the Golden Tartars,

but the northern frontiers had been made safe; there was no

        fighting, but only an endless boredom there.

At fifty-four, he went home to his native village, having never

        gained a preferment,

distressed by what he heard of the luxury and incontinence of the

        court.

He dreamed in his work of the “vast smoke” of chariots, as they

        raced upon the plains;

he described his travels to far outposts, by night on a river that was

        held in the moon’s white stare.

Though he styled himself the Hermit of the Mossy Grove, and said

        that he was wild, irascible and drunken, it seems he longed for

        the company of other poets.

He had married a local girl, when she was fifteen, and spent most

        of his time quietly lost in his books.

Pondering both the Taoist and Ch’an Buddhist teachings, he grew

        more and more enamored of nature,

and found his companionship in mountains, rivers, and trees.

In rainy weather he would put aside his studies and trudge to the

        inn, to drink with the farming hands.

“Daily the town inn sells a thousand gallons of wine. The people

        are happy; why should I alone be sad?”

He was utterly sincere in his love of beauty. The thing he has seen

        appears on the white paper. There is a sense of overbrimming life.

A Chinese critic has said, “His poetry has the simplicity of daily

        speech; in its simplicity there is depth, and in its poignance

        there is tranquility.”

When he was seventy-one, the Mongols arose once more, and

        began to attack the Celestial Horde;

the armies of the Sung were continually defeated, and were even

        driven out of Szechuan.

Again, he applied for enlistment, but amidst the turmoil in the

        corridors at the provincial capital he was pushed aside and

        ignored.

Giving up all hope that before he died he would see himself in

        battle, he returned to his village in disgust.

His songs were now being sung by the muleteers in far mountain

        passes, by girls bringing silk to be washed in the streams.

In the capital, they were exclaimed over at wine parties, and were

        murmured beside the Imperial Lake.

He was revered, if rarely seen, in his village, but finally one morning

        the word went around that he had fallen hopelessly ill.

Everything was made ready — the thin coffin, the two thick quilts,

        and the payment for the monks;

the earth was thrown out of his grave onto the hillside, and

        the incense was bought that would smoulder among the

        graveposts there.

But then, the next day, he rose on his couch, and called for wine to

        be brought him from the marketplace;

he had the blind rolled up on his view to the south, and he wrote

        some impeccable verses, in the tonally-regular, seven-syllable

        form.