The Selected Poems of T'ao Ch'ien Read online

Ch’in’s First Emperor ravaged the sense

  heaven gives things, and wise people fled.

  Huang and Ch’i left for Shang Mountain,

  and these villagers were also never seen

  again. Covering all trace of their flight,

  the path they came on slowly grew over and

  vanished. They worked hard tending fields

  together, and come dusk, they all rested.

  When mulberry and bamboo shade thickened,

  planting time for beans and millet came.

  Spring brought the silkworm’s long thread,

  and autumn harvests without taxes. There,

  overgrown paths crossing back and forth,

  roosters calling to the bark of dogs,

  people used old-style bowls for ritual

  and wore clothes long out of fashion. Kids

  wandered at ease, singing. Old-timers

  happily went around visiting friends.

  Things coming into blossom promised mild

  summer days, and bare trees sharp winds.

  Without calendars to keep track, earth’s

  four seasons of themselves became years,

  and happy, more than content, no one

  worried over highbrow insights. A marvel

  hidden away five hundred years, this

  charmed land was discovered one morning,

  but pure and impure spring from different

  realms, so it soon returned to solitude.

  Wandering in the world, who can fathom

  what lies beyond its clamor and dust. O,

  how I long to rise into thin air and

  ride the wind in search of my own kind.

  UNTITLED

  Great men want the four seas. I’ve only

  wanted old age to come unnoticed like

  this. My family together in one place,

  kids and grandkids looking after each

  other still, I linger out mornings over

  koto and wine, the winejar never dry.

  My clothes a shambles, exhausting every

  joy, I sleep late now, and nod off early.

  Why live like all those fine men, hearts

  stuffed with fire and ice to the end,

  their hundred-year return to the grave

  nothing but an empty path of ambition?

  WRITTEN ONE MORNING IN THE 5TH MONTH, AFTER TAI CHU-PU’S POEM

  It’s all an empty boat, oars dangling free,

  but return goes on without end. The year

  begins, and suddenly, in a moment’s glance,

  midyear stars come back around, bright

  sun and moon bringing all things into such

  abundance. North woods lush, blossoming,

  rain falls in its season from hallowed

  depths. Dawn opens. Summer breezes rise.

  Has anyone come into this world without

  leaving it? Life will always end. At home

  in what lasts, I wait it out. A bent arm

  my only pillow, I keep emptiness whole.

  Move with change through rough and smooth,

  and life’s never up or down. If you see

  how much height fills whatever you do,

  why climb Hua or Sung, peaks of immortals?

  UNTITLED

  Days and months never take their time.

  The four seasons keep bustling each other

  away. Cold winds churn lifeless branches.

  Fallen leaves cover long paths. We’re

  frail, crumbling with each turning year.

  Our temples turn white early, and once

  that bleached streamer’s tucked into your

  hair, the road ahead starts closing in.

  This house is an inn awaiting travelers,

  and I another guest leaving. All this

  leaving and leaving – where will I ever

  end up? My old home’s on South Mountain.

  ELEGY FOR MYSELF

  It’s the late-autumn pitch-tone Wu-yi, Ting year of the hare. The heavens are cold now, and the nights long. Geese pass, traveling south in desolate, windswept skies. Leaves turn yellow and fall. I, Master T’ao, will soon leave this inn awaiting travelers, and return forever to my native home. Everyone grieves. Mourning together, they’ve gathered here tonight for these farewell rites. They’re making offerings to me: elegant foods and libations of crystalline wine. I look into their already blurred faces, listen to their voices blending away into silence.

  Hu-ooo! Ai-tsai hu-ooo!

  Boundless – this vast heap earth,

  this bottomless heaven, how perfectly

  boundless. And among ten thousand

  things born of them, to find myself

  a person somehow, though a person

  fated from the beginning to poverty

  alone, to those empty cups and bowls,

  thin clothes against winter cold.

  Even hauling water brought such joy,

  and I sang under a load of firewood:

  this life in brushwood-gate seclusion

  kept my days and nights utterly full.

  Spring and autumn following each other

  away, there was always garden work –

  some weeding here or hoeing there.

  What I tended I harvested in plenty,

  and to the pleasure of books, koto

  strings added harmony and balance.

  I’d sun in winter to keep warm,

  and summers, bathe in cool streams.

  Never working more than hard enough,

  I kept my heart at ease always,

  and whatever came, I rejoiced in all

  heaven made of my hundred-year life.

  Nothing more than this hundred-year

  life – and still, people resent it.

  Afraid they’ll never make it big,

  hoarding seasons, they clutch at

  days, aching to be treasured alive

  and long remembered in death. Alone,

  alone and nothing like them, I’ve

  always gone my own way. All their

  esteem couldn’t bring me honor, so

  how can mud turn me black? Resolute

  here in my little tumbledown house,

  I swilled wine and scribbled poems.

  Seeing what fate brings, our destiny

  clear, who can live without concern?

  But today, facing this final change,

  I can’t find anything to resent:

  I lived a life long and, cherishing

  solitude always, abundant. Now

  old age draws to a close, what more

  could I want? Hot and cold pass

  away and away. And absence returns,

  something utterly unlike presence.

  My wife’s family came this morning,

  and friends hurried over tonight.

  They’ll take me out into the country,

  bury me where the spirit can rest

  easy. O dark journey. O desolate

  grave, gate opening into the dark

  unknown. An opulent coffin Huan’s

  disgrace, Yang’s naked burial a joke,

  it’s empty – there’s nothing in death

  but the empty sorrows of distance.

  Build no gravemound, plant no trees –

  just let the days and months pass

  away. I avoided it my whole life,

  so why invite songs of praise now?

  Life is deep trouble. And death,

  why should death be anything less?

  Hu-ooo! Ai-tsai hu-ooo!

  BURIAL SONGS

  1

  Whatever will live will die. I died

  young, though not shortchanged by fate.

  Last night I was like anyone else.

  This morning I’m listed among ghosts.

  The spirit thins away who knows where,

  leaving a dry body inside hollow timber.

  Looking for their father, my pampered


  children cry. Friends touch me, sobbing.

  But I’ll never know gain and loss again,

  or worry over good and evil. After

  some thousand autumns or ten thousand

  years, who knows honor from disgrace?

  Of my time in the world, I only regret

  drinking so often without enough wine.

  2

  I used to live without wine. Now my

  cup’s brimful – and for what? This

  spring wine’s crowned with foam,

  but how will I ever taste it again?

  Delicacies crowd the altar before me,

  and at my side, those I love sob.

  I speak – it’s a mouth of silence.

  I look – eyes of darkness. I slept

  beneath high ceilings; now I’ll stay

  in a waste village of weeds. I’ll

  set out this morning, leaving our gate

  behind, and never find my way back.

  3

  Boundless – in the boundless, weed-ridden

  wastes, white poplars moan in the wind.

  In bitter ninth-month frost, come to this

  distant place – it’s farewell. All four directions

  empty, not a house in sight, looming

  gravemounds peak and summit. Wind

  moaning to itself in the branches here,

  horses rear up, crying out toward heaven.

  Once this dark house is all closed up,

  day won’t dawn again in a thousand years.

  Day won’t dawn again in a thousand years,

  and what can all our wisdom do about it?

  Those who were just here saying farewell

  return to their separate homes. And though

  my family may still grieve, the others

  must be singing again by now. Once you’re

  dead and gone, what then? Trust yourself

  to the mountainside. It will take you in.

  NOTES

  Many of T’ao Ch’ien’s lines echo passages in the classical texts. This adds a deep resonance to his clear, natural language. However, to avoid losing the poems in scholarship, only references that are essential to a poem’s primary meaning are explained in these notes. For extensive commentaries on T’ao Ch’ien’s work and scholarly translations of the complete collection, see James Hightower’s The Poetry of T’ao Ch’ien (Oxford, 1970) and A.R. Davis’s T’ao Yüan-ming: His Works and Their Meaning (Cambridge, 1983).

  Page 14 CUP AND BOWL WERE EMPTY AS OFTEN AS YEN HUI’S: The first of several admiring allusions to Confucius’s favorite disciple, Yen Hui, who is exemplified in Analects 6/11 and 11/19:

  The Master said: “How noble Hui is! To live in a meager lane with nothing to eat or drink but a little rice in a split-bamboo bowl and water in a gourd cup – no one else could bear such misery. But it doesn’t even bother Hui. His joy never wavers. How noble Hui is!”

  The Master said: “Hui has nearly made it. He is often empty.”

  Yen Hui died young as a result of the constant hunger he endured while cultivating the Confucian Way.

  WU-HUAI, KO-T’IEN: Sage rulers from China’s legendary prehistory.

  Page 17 CH’I: Universal breath or life-giving principle.

  Page 18 LIU CH’AI-SANG: Liu I-min, former prefect of Ch’ai-sang, T’ao Ch’ien’s home village. This friend of T’ao’s had retired to Lu Mountain, where he entered the monastery Hui-yüan ran near T’ao’s farm.

  Page 19 DUST: Insubstantial worldly affairs.

  Page 21 SOUTH MOUNTAIN: A symbolic renaming of Lu Mountain. Calling up such passages as “like the timelessness of South Mountain” in the Classic of Poetry (Shih Ching, 166/6), South Mountain came to have a kind of mythic stature as the embodiment of the elemental and timeless nature of the earth. It later became an important element of T’ao’s poetic world.

  Page 23 KOTO: This term, now adopted into English from Japanese, is used to translate “ch’in” and “se,” ancient stringed instruments which are the koto’s Chinese ancestors, and which Chinese poets used to accompany the chanting of their poems.

  Page 25 KUEI YEAR OF THE HARE: 403. In the traditional dating system, each year was identified with a Stem (Kuei) and a Branch (hare). There are ten Celestial Stems and twelve Earthly Branches, which combine in a regular order so that the same combination recurs every sixty years.

  SOUTHERN FIELDS: A name familiar from numerous pastoral poems in the Classic of Poetry.

  FARMER LAUGHING AT CONFUCIUS: One of T’ao’s favorite allusions, from Analects 18/7:

  Tzu-lu was traveling with Confucius and fell behind. Meeting an old man carrying a basket on the cane over his shoulder, he asked, “Have you seen the master pass by here?” The old man replied, “Your four limbs have never known work, and you can’t tell the five grains apart. Who is it you call master?” At this, he planted his walking-stick and began pulling weeds.

  Page 26 WORRY ABOUT THE WAY, NOT HUNGER: Confucius says this in Analects 15/32.

  PASSERSBY NEVER STOP TO ASK THE WAY: Anicereversal of the respect accorded Confucius in line 2, this is another recurring allusion, refering to Analects 18/6, where the “river crossing” represents the Way through this “surging and swelling” world, which a sage masters:

  As Confucius passed by, Ch’ang-chü and Chieh-ni were in the field plowing together. He sent Tzu-lu to ask them about the river crossing. Ch’ang-chü said, “Who’s that you’re driving for?” Tzu-lu answered, “It’s Confucius.” “You mean Confucius of Lu?” “Yes.” “Then he knows the river crossing well.” Tzu-lu then asked Chieh-ni, but Chieh-ni replied, “And who are you?” “I am Chung Yu.” “You mean Chung Yu who is a disciple of Confucius of Lu?” “Yes.” “It’s all surging and swelling. Everything under heaven is awash. And who’s going to change it? To follow a man who’s given up people – how could that ever compare to following one who’s given up the world?” And folding earth back over seed, he went on working without pause.

  Page 28 12TH MONTH, KUEI YEAR OF THE HARE: January 404. In the Chinese lunar calendar, the first day of the year corresponds to the beginning of spring. It falls on a different day every year, somewhere between late January and late February, so the 1st month corresponds roughly to February and the 12th month to January.

  RESOLUTE IN PRIVATION: A virtue highly regarded and often cited by T’ao. Borrowed from Analects 15/2:

  In Ch’en, when supplies ran out, the disciples grew so weak they couldn’t get to their feet. Tzu-lu, his anger apparent, asked, “So the worthy also suffer such privation?” “If you’re worthy, you’re resolute in privation,” Confucius replied, “If you’re small, you get swept away.”

  Page 29 HAN HSIN: Han Hsin (d. 196 B.C.) rose from humble beginnings to become a famous general who was instrumental in founding the Han Dynasty. At one point, when he was penniless and half-starved, a washerwoman fed him for nearly a month. He promised to repay her handsomely one day, which he did.

  Page 32 This is a fu (prose-poem), hence its irregular form.

  11TH MONTH, YI YEAR OF THE SNAKE: December 405.

  Page 35 CHANT, SETTLING INTO MY BREATH: A Taoist method of harmonizing with the natural world.

  Page 37 Virtually all of the poems in this book are ku-shih (ancient-style), with five characters per line. But this poem employs a four-character line in imitation of the form used in the Classic of Poetry. Its title and preface are also in Classic of Poetry form.

  Page 38 YI RIVER: This passage, and the spring clothes in T’ao’s preface, recall Analects 11/26, where Confucius asks four disciples to describe what they would do if they were given control of a state. After the first three had given unacceptable answers, the last disciple laid his koto aside and said: “In late spring, when the spring clothes are all made, I would go with five or six friends and six or seven servant-boys to bathe in the Yi River and enjoy the breeze at Rain Dance Altars, then return home chanting poetry.” Confucius approved.

 
; HUANG AND T’ANG: Huang Ti (reign 2698–2598 B.C.) and Yao (reign 2357-2255 B.C.) are legendary emperors from China’s semi-mythical Golden Age.

  Page 39 FORM, SHADOW, SPIRIT: T’ao Ch’ien seems to have invented this tripartite division.

  Page 41 GREAT POTTER: According to myth, he creates the ten thousand things on his potter’s wheel, which turns like the four seasons. Thus, he is the personification of change, earth’s ongoing process of spontaneous self-creation.