One Hundred Poems from the Chinese Book

Although I like this book a great deal, I like it somewhat less than Rexroth's earlier anthology One Hundred Poems from the Japanese, but this may reflect my greater sympathy with the classical Japanese tradition than the classical Chinese tradition. (I concede I speak presumptuously, out of great ignorance; I know these works only in translation.)

Japanese poems are often short (haiku of course, but other forms as well) and yield much of their meaning either immediately or after brief contemplation. They have the effect either of a zen koan or of something similar but slow-cooked: either a sudden illumination or a gradual brightening. Chinese poetry, on the other hand, seems more magisterial, reserved, and allusive, its images often speak to me in a code I find hard to crack. I regret to say that some of the poems here have defeated me (or perhaps I have defeated myself through them. It is, after all, much the same thing.)

Still, there is so much good, accessible stuff in this anthology. Rexroth translates using plain English words, organized with grace and charged with immediacy. He has a poet's instinct how to end a line and where to place a word. He is particularly good at poems of loss. The "lament of the neglected mistress" genre comes first to mind, for there are many such poems here, but perhaps even more poignant are the poems about the loss of missing friends, of familiar deaths, and the great loss of old age.

The best part of this anthology is the first third: thirty-five poems by Tu Fu, Rexroth's favorite poet, one of the two greatest of all the poets of China. (The other'ten years his senior'was his friend and mentor Li Po.) Rexroth chose these thirty-five poems from the thousand and a half works of Tu Fu's which are extant, and, and he tells us that the translation of these particular pieces took place over a period of many years. Rexroth identified strongly with this scholar poet who lived in a chaotic age, and describes him as "the creator of an elaborate poetic personality, a fictional character half-mask, half revelation." Rexroth communicates his personal concerns through the mask of Tu Fu extremely effectively'perhaps more effectively'than in his own poetry.

To give you an idea of the riches within, I will offer here three poems. One of the thirty five by Tu Fu, and the only one included by somebody named Hsu Chao. Both poems mention war, and I couldn't help thinking that they both spoke with particular eloquence to the heart of the pacifist Rexroth, who published this poem in 1970, during the Vietnam War. The last poem is by the lady Li Ch'ing Chao, who adapts the old genre of "the courtesan's lament" in order to mourn her dead husband.

NIGHT IN THE HOUSE BY THE RIVER

It is late in the year:
Yin and Yang struggle
In the brief sunlight.
On the desert mountains
Frost and snow
Gleam in the freezing night.
Past midnight,
Drums and bugles ring out,
Violent, cutting the heart.
Over the Triple Gorge the Milky Way
Pulsates between the stars.
The bitter cries of thousands of households
Can be heard above the noise of battle.
Everywhere the workers sing wild songs.
The great heroes and generals of old time
Are yellow dust forever now.
Such are the affairs of men.
Poetry and letters
Persist in silence and solitude. 'TU FU


THE LOCUST SWARM

Locusts hid their eggs in the corpse
Of a soldier. When the worms were
mature, they took wing. Their drone
Was ominous, their shells hard.
Anyone could tell they had hatched
From an unsatisfied anger.
They flew swiftly towards the North.
They hid the sky like a curtain.
When the wife of the soldier
Saw them, she turned pale. Her breath
Failed her. She knew he was dead
In battle, his corpse lost in
The desert. That night she dreamed
She rode a white horse, so swift
It left no footprints, and came
To where he lay in the sand.
She looked at his face, eaten
By the locusts, and tears of
Blood filled her eyes. Ever after
She would not let her children
Injure any insect which
Might have fed on the dead. She
Would lift her face to the sky
And say, "O locusts, if you
Are seeking a place to winter
You can find shelter in my heart. 'HSU CHAO


ALONE IN THE NIGHT

The warm rain and pure wind
Have just freed the willows from
The ice. As I watch the peach trees,
Spring rises from my heart and blooms on
My cheeks. My mind is unsteady,
As if I were drunk. I try
To write a poem in which
My tears will flow together
With your tears. My rouge is stale.
My hairpins are too heavy.
I throw myself across my
Gold Cushions, wrapped in my lonely
Doubled quilt, and crush the phoenixes
In my headdress. Alone, deep
In bitter loneliness, without
Even a good dream, I lie
Trimming the lamp in the passing night. --LI CH'ING CHAO