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J.P. Seaton

Rhymes in a Boat II.

Yuan Mei

From the neighbor’s east, an owl’s weird cry…
His heart is hard. If he held a spear, the owl would die.
From the neighbor’s west, a fox has come
to yap outside his room.
His heart is set. If he held a bow.
the fox would meet his doom.
The old monk’s meditation ends, by saddest sighs it’s marred.
Evil? Not to see it’s easy: not to hear it’s hard.

J.P. Seaton

 

Rhymes in a Boat III.

Yuan Mei

A good horse goes by day, and rests at night.
The sound of oars goes on and on. no end in sight.
When I’m home I flee from guests,
my gate is always closed.
In a boat I’m home to all,
to visit, none’s disposed.
Thirty-six thousand days
in the life of a lucky man,
but a single day that’s spent in a boat
has simply an endless span.

J.P. Seaton

~

Tu Fu

I heard long ago about Tungting Lake
here I am climbing Yuehyang Tower
where Wu and Ch’u divide South from East
where Heaven and Earth and day and night drift
of family and friends I have no news
old and sick I live on a boat
warhorses block the northern passes
my tears fall on the railing.

Red Pine

~

Shih-te

I laugh at my failing strength in old age
Yet still dote on pines and crags, to wander there in solitude
How I regret that in all these past years until today
I’ve let things run there course like an unanchored boat.

James Hargett

Night Thoughts While Traveling

Tu Fu

A light breeze rustles the reeds
Along the river banks. The
Mast of my lonely boat soars
Into the night. Stars blossom
Over the vast desert of
Waters. Moonlight flows on the
Surging river. My poems have
Made me famous but I grow
Old, ill and tired, blown hither
And yon; I am like a gull
Lost between heaven and earth.

Kenneth Rexroth

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The Shih Ching , usually translated as either The Book of Songs or the Classic of Poetry, is the first great collection of Chinese poetry. Tradition says that it was edited into its present form by the Sage of Sages, Confucius himself. In fact the book was assembled before, during, and after the life of Confucius. Its more than three hundred poems include fragments of works as old as the Shang Dynasty (traditional; dates 1766-1154 BCE) as well as “contemporary” poems from the Chou feudal states written or spoken by both aristocratic court figures and just plain “folks”. A great deal has been said about the origin of many, if not the majority of the poems as oral “folk” art, but it is clear from the artistry of the written language in which they have been handed down that, like the scribes who improved upon the originally oral poetry attributed to “Homer” in the West to create the Iliad and the Odyssey, the people who converted Chou folk songs and court verses into poetry in written Chinese characters clearly thought of themselves as (and were) artists. So the characters used to render simple and direct lyrical utterances of the illiterate peasant folk often honor them with carefully chosen written vocabulary: the heart and soul of folk art remains clearly present, but literary subtleties are introduced. The scribes who created the Shih Ching were poets, not tape recorders. They chose the best of what existed, and they honored it with their own art.

In its present form, the Shih Ching consists of three major sections, the Kuo Feng, or Odes of the States, comprising 160 of the 300 are generally but not always folk songs. The Ya (Elegant Verses) subdivided with no obvious criteria into greater and lesser, include poems 161-265, and the Sung or Temple Odes high ritual songs and bits of dynastic myth, include poems 266-305. The present selection is comes, all but a single longer poem on drinking and its positive and negative consequences from the “Lesser Elegants”, all come from the Kuo Feng Sections.

Knowledge of the Shih Ching poems was a necessity of diplomatic practice around the time of Confucius, when it was a common practice to deliver or at least support the delivery of diplomatic messages among the feudal domains (the “States or Guo of the Guo Feng) by oral presentation of relevant lines from the Classic. From the Han on many of the poems where imbued with very specific allegorical interpretations, but it is clear that later poets, who memorized the book word for word, used it as allusive material in their own poems at least as often for its plain “folk” messages as for its orthodoxly approved allegorical ones.