孟郊诗

Poems of Meng Jiao


Index

秋怀

Autumn Mind


孤骨夜难卧
吟虫相唧唧
老泣无涕洟
秋露为滴沥
去壮暂如翦
来衰纷似织
触绪无新心
丛悲有馀忆
讵忍逐南帆
江山践往昔

Lonely bones, hard to sleep at night.
Insect chorus, chirping to each other.
Old sadness, without any tears.
Autumn comes with a pattering of rain.
Strength gone, as if it were never there.
Weakness comes, weaving its confusion.
I've come to the end, no new ideas.
Memories enough, in this thicket of sadness.
How can I bear to follow the sails south,
To tread again the scenery of the past?

秋月颜色冰
老客志气单
冷露滴梦破
峭风梳骨寒
席上印病文
肠中转愁盘
疑怀无所凭
虚听多无端
梧桐枯峥嵘
声响如哀弹

Autumn moon, a face like ice.
Old peddlar of a lonely ideal.
Cold dew, drips down broken dreams.
Cutting wind, combs my chilled bones.
On my mat, I write sick words.
Down in my bowels, anxieties churning.
I doubt my mind, unreliable,
Empty sounds, on and on, without end.
Like a lute tree withering on the heights,
You can hear the echoes of my sad tunes.

一尺月透户
仡栗如剑飞
老骨坐亦惊
病力所尚微
虫苦贪剪色
鸟危巢焚辉
孀娥理故丝
孤哭抽余思
浮年不可追
衰步多夕归

A slice of moon stands in the doorway.
Chestnut limbs move like flying swords.
Old bones, they sit and tremble.
Sick strength, barely hanging on.
Insects bitter, as life rushes to its end.
Birds imperiled, nests burning bright.
Beautiful widows, weaving their old threads.
I cry alone, lashed by old longings.
Floating years cannot be pursued and yet
My weak footsteps return to them every night.

秋至老更贫
破屋无门扉
一片月落床
四壁风入衣
疏梦不复远
弱心良易归
商葩将去绿
缭绕争馀辉
野步踏事少
病谋向物违
幽幽草根虫
生意与我微
竹风相戛语
幽闺暗中闻
鬼神满衰听
恍惚难自分
商叶堕干雨
秋衣卧单云
病骨可剸物
酸呻亦成文
瘦攒如此枯
壮落随西曛
褭褭一线命
徒言系絪缊
老骨惧秋月
秋月刀剑棱
纤辉不可干
冷魂坐自凝
羁雌巢空镜
仙飙荡浮冰
惊步恐自翻
病大不敢凌
单床寤皎皎
瘦卧心兢兢
洗河不见水
透浊为清澄
诗壮昔空说
诗衰今何凭

Autumn finds me old and poorer.
Broken-down house. No leaf in the door.
Slice of moonlight falls on the bed.
Cold wind coming from all four walls.
In scattered dreams, I don't get far.
Weak-hearted, I give in and return.
Autumn flowers will soon be brown.
They linger, struggling, in their radiant glow.
My wild steps tread down my young ways.
My own sickly plans work against me.
Far below, worms eat the roots of grass.
Ideas come and I fade away.
Wind is clattering the spears of bamboo.
In a distant doorway, I see dim light.
Gods and monsters fill my weak hearing
But so dimly I can't make it out.
Autumn leaves fall helpless in rain.
Autumn wraps the heavens in a single cloud.
Sick so long, my bones are almost sharp.
Stiff and growning, I can still write.
Writing sick like this is draining,
Strength failing as the sun sets in the west.
Slender, a single thread of fate,
Mere words, bind me to creation.
Old bones fear autumn's moonlight.
Autumn moonlight like a blade's edge.
Thin gleam, can't defend against it.
My cold soul sits here and congeals.
Bound woman nesting in an empty mirror.
Immortal whirlwind shakes a floe of ice.
Frightened footsteps. Afraid I'll fall.
Sickness worsens. Don't come near me.
Lonely bed, I awaken to realization.
Lying weak. Heart pounding hard.
Bathing in the river, I can't see the water.
Muddy and turbid, now as if clear.
Poetry's youth - ancient empty talk.
Poetry's weakness - today's lack of substance.

老病多异虑
朝夕非一心
商虫哭衰运
繁响不可寻
秋草瘦如发
贞芳缀疏金
晚鲜讵几时
驰景还易阴
弱习徒自耻
莫知欲何任
露才一见谗
潜智早已深
防深不防露
此意古所箴

Lingering illness raises other concerns.
Morning to night, never of one mind.
Autumn insects cry weakly in the distance.
For all their noise, you can't find them if you look.
Autumn grasses thin out like my hair.
Chaste fragrances scattered like rare gold.
Late and precious, how could they last?
The passing scenery gathers darkness.
My own weak efforts only shame me.
I can't realize what I want to express.
Revealed talent, always completely misunderstood.
Hidden wisdom has long been deep.
Preventing depth makes us vulnerable.
This idea the ancients taught us.

岁暮景气干
秋风兵甲声
织织劳无衣
喓喓徒自鸣
商声耸中夜
蹇支废前行
青发如秋园
一剪不复生
少年如饿花
瞥见不复明
君子山岳定
小人丝毫争
多争多无寿
天道戒其盈

In the end, the scenery is hollow.
Autumn winds, a martial rattling.
Work and work, it doesn't clothe you.
Your cries are like the crickets' chirping.
Autumn's sounds arise at midnight.
What you rely on fails before you start.
Creation is like an autumn garden --
Once cut, it won't grow back.
Youth is like a hungry firework,
A glimpse and it won't shine again.
Gentleman, firm as lofty mountains.
But small men quarrel over nothing.
Too much quarrelling and life is short.
Heaven's Way admonishes us.

冷露多瘁索
枯风晓吹嘘
秋深月清苦
虫老声粗疏
赪珠枝累累
芳金蔓舒舒
草木亦趣时
寒荣似春馀
悲彼零落生
与我心何如

Cold revelation, worn out from long search.
Withering conservatism, boastful in the dawn.
Deep in autumn, moon seems worn out.
Voices of the aging insects turning rough.
Crimson berries hanging from the branches.
Gold's virtue, spreading everywhere.
Trees and flowers have a final moment,
Chill blossoms, like a residue of spring.
The sadness of others crops up here and there.
But what can my heart do?

老人朝夕异
生死每日中
坐随一啜安
卧与万景空
视短不到门
听涩讵逐风
还如刻削形
免有纤悉聪
浪浪谢初始
皎皎幸归终
孤隔文章友
亲密蒿莱翁
岁绿闵以黄
秋节迸又穷
四时既相迫
万虑自然丛
南逸浩淼际
北贫硗确中
曩怀沉遥江
衰思结秋嵩
锄食难满腹
叶衣多丑躬
尘缕不自整
古吟将谁通
幽竹啸鬼神
楚铁生虬龙
志士多异感
运郁由邪衷
常思书破衣
至死教初童
习乐莫习声
习声多顽聋
明明胸中言
愿写为高崇

Old men are different every day.
Life and death are with you all the time.
Sit and have a nice peaceful cry.
Or lie reviewing myriads of memory's scenes.
Old eyes can't see across the courtyard.
With poor hearing, how can you follow the wind?
Returning is like being scraped with a knife.
So you escape into your fine-grained intelligence.
Waves have worn down your first works.
If virtuous, fortune comes back in the end.
Alone, separated from your literary friends,
Your closest relation is some old wild hermit.
Green years mourned as withered.
Moon Festival bursts forth in its weakness.
Four seasons rush each other in passing.
Ten thousand worries naturally crowd in.
The south escapes down to a watery vastness.
The north, impoverished by its barren lands.
Ancient feelings of a long, deep river.
Fading longings for an autumn mountain peak.
Give up food, it's hard to fill your belly.
Clothed in leaves, it makes you uglier still.
Wisps of dust cannot make you whole.
Who will understand these old chants?
In distant bamboo, howl the gods and monsters.
Bright iron births the young horned dragon.
The ambitious have their varied motives,
Bearing fragrance, obeying evil in their hearts.
I've mused on how writing wears out my clothes.
Arrived at death teaching my first boy.
Improving happiness does not improve one's reputation.
Improving reputation makes one deaf and stupid.
So bright, these words in my mind.
If only I could write them in their transcendence.

幽苦日日甚
老力步步微
常恐暂下床
至门不复归
饥者重一食
寒者重一衣
泛广岂无涘
恣行亦有随
语中失次第
身外生疮痍
桂蠹既潜朽
桂花损贞姿
詈言一失香
千古闻臭词
将死始前悔
前悔不可追
哀哉轻薄行
终日与驷驰

Distant hardships every day increase.
Old strength fades out step by step.
I often fear, lying here in bed, that if I went
Out to the gate, I wouldn't make it back.
The starving will all eat heavily.
The chilled will all dress heavily, too.
Floating in vastness, who can leave the shore,
Travel recklessly, and still have followers?
In the midst of speaking, the words fall apart.
Outside myself, distress arises.
Worms have already eaten the cassia from within.
The chaste beauty of its autumn blossoms is ruined.
Cursed words lose all their fragrance.
All the ages have heard their stinking rhyme.
On death's bed, we start regretting. But
Regretting the past won't call it back.
How sad, the flippant paths we've taken.
Day is over. Our team of horses races on.

流运闪欲尽
枯折皆相号
棘枝风哭酸
桐叶霜颜高
老虫干铁鸣
惊兽孤玉咆
商气洗声瘦
晚阴驱景劳
集耳不可遏
噎神不可逃
蹇行散馀郁
幽坐谁与曹
抽壮无一线
剪怀盈千刀
清诗既名脁
金菊亦姓陶
收拾昔所弃
咨嗟今比毛
幽幽岁晏言
零落不可操
霜气入病骨
老人身生冰
衰毛暗相刺
冷痛不可胜
鷕鷕伸至明
强强揽所凭
瘦坐形欲折
腹饥心将崩
劝药左右愚
言语如见憎
耸耳噎神开
始知功用能
日中视馀疮
暗隙闻绳蝇
彼嗅一何酷
此味半点凝
潜毒尔无厌
馀生我堪矜
冻飞幸不远
冬令反心惩
出没各有时
寒热苦相凌
仰谢调运翁
请命愿有征
黄河倒上天
众水有却来
人心不及水
一直去不回
一直亦有巧
不肯至蓬莱
一直不知疲
唯闻至省台
忍古不失古
失古志易摧
失古剑亦折
失古琴亦哀
夫子失古泪
当时落漼漼
诗老失古心
至今寒皑皑
古骨无浊肉
古衣如藓苔
劝君勉忍古
忍古销尘埃
詈言不见血
杀人何纷纷
声如穷家犬
吠窦何誾誾
詈痛幽鬼哭
詈侵黄金贫
言词岂用多
憔悴在一闻
古詈舌不死
至今书云云
今人咏古书
善恶宜自分
秦火不爇舌
秦火空爇文
所以詈更生
至今横絪缊

The spread of ideas, people avoid completely.
Trim dead branches and everyone howls.
Wind cries in the thorn branches, sick at heart.
Lute tree's leaves all covered in frost.
Old insects cry like hollow iron.
Startled beasts roar like ringing jade.
Autumn air washes out our voices.
Late shadows ride sluggish across our toil.
The gathering audience cannot be stopped.
Their choking spirits cannot be avoided.
Lame, we walk through abundance.
Who are those like us, sitting in the distance?
We are bound together by not even a thread but
Severing our minds requires a thousand blades.
Pure poetry has been sacrificed on the altar.
Gold chysanthemums. The people's happiness.
Clean up what the ancients have left us.
Sigh at today's insignificance.
In the distance, an age's end is speaking.
In this desolation, we can't hear what it says.
A frosty spirit penetrates old bones
And the old men turn to ice.
Their niggling pricks us in the dark
But their cold pain will not defeat us.
Crying out, spirit reaches understanding.
Strong, we cling to our supports.
We want to break out of these constricting forms.
But if belly is empty, the mind will collapse.
Urging remedies is more or less stupid.
This speech is like seeing what you hate.
Arising in the ear, it opens the choked spirit.
You begin to see that skill requires capacity.
Broad daylight shows you ills enough.
Through dark cracks you hear the seething flies.
Others smell how strong it is.
The smell of it even congeals a little.
Hidden poison thus goes unloathed.
Arising in abundance, endure the suffering.
Frozen in mid-air, its fate is short.
This winter warns our mind to return.
For coming and going, everyone has time.
Hot or cold, all approach bitterness.
Admiring desication, old men call the tune.
They plead with fate, hoping to be summoned.
Yellow River flows up into Heaven
But its waters ceaselessly return.
Men's minds are not as good as rivers,
Single-minded, they leave and don't return.
Single-minded, clever, and deceptive,
Unwilling to approach the immortal isles.
Single-minded, they are untiring.
I only hear them reach the provincial stage.
Uphold the ancients and don't forsake them.
Forsake them and your aspirations shatter.
Forsake them and your swords will break.
Forsake them and your music will be pitiful.
Kongzi mourned the forsaking of the ancients
And his times fell into the depths.
Poetry has long forsaken the ancient mind,
Arriving at its current chill frigidity.
Old bones have no corrupted flesh.
Old clothes are like forest moss.
I urge you to uphold the ancients.
Uphold them, clear away the dust.
Cursed words don't see the blood.
Killing people -- such confusion.
Voices like a poor man's dog,
Barking down a hole, so respectfully.
Curse the pain of old ghosts wailing.
Curse the immersion in worthless gold.
How could we ever say enough?
Suffering and haggard, let everyone hear.
Ancient curses never die.
They come to us in countless scrolls.
Today we chant the ancient verse.
Good and evil should be ours to distinguish.
Qin's fires could not burn the voices.
Qin's fires were powerless against culture.
So let us renew those curses
Until we shake the creative forces of Heaven.

-- 孟郊


废话

It is difficult to tell when this was written. It would be nice if the poets didn't dwell upon their old age at the sight of their first grey hair. And they might refrain from playing up their weakness during illness. The title, 秋怀, could be "autumn feelings." But Meng Jiao, in this poem, seems more concerned with his mind.

1

I suspect that Meng Jiao has passed his exams. He's probably still working as a librarian and single. He's not sick or old. But he is unable to move the art of his poetry forward. He is looking for inspiration in the past. But his past, and I can sympathize with this, is chock full of things he'd rather not go back to. But he's going anyway. And by doing so, he is moving his poetry forward. This is not like any of his prior poetry.

2

Line 2 here begins with 老客 which could be "old guest," "old traveler," or "old exile." But it is also "peddlar." I feel that Meng Jiao is calling himself an "old peddlar of lonely ideals." In line 7, I think he is doubting the results of his mind, not his own sanity. He writes sickly words and reads them back, hearing only empty sounds. He is listening for something and not hearing it, which we might express as reaching for something but being unable to grasp it.

3

The first quatrain here is the setting. The second is how he perceives these memories he is reaching for. And the final couplet expresses his failure to find what he is looking for. I doubt the insects and birds are actually insects or birds. Birds with burning nests is an image he has already used for the hardships of civilians in an age of war. But I do wonder who the beatiful widows are. Was the woman who didn't bring a willow branch also a beautiful, perhaps slightly older, widow? Something to keep in mind.

4

Chinese poets rarely are talking about what they appear to be talking about. Meng Jiao is certainly this way. But this verse reminds me of fever dreams I've had. And the images are so strange and vivid that a fever dream seems a likely explanation for them. Although the bound woman in the mirror could be No Willow Branch again. If I am reading his realization correctly, Meng Jiao is moving away from both the 古文 ideas of Han Yu and away from the weak poetry of his own time.

5

What came to me here is that the insects (虫) in this suite of poems are Meng Jiao's contemporary poets. And perhaps "grasses" (草), which in the Tang meant the meadow as a whole with wildflowers and wild grasses, are their poetic works. And in spite of my fever-dream idea, I'm still not convinced Meng Jiao is at all actually ill here. For him the times are late, the world fades into darkness, and good poetry is scattered and faint like the fading wildflowers and the cries of dying insects. He is certainly sickened by the literary world's weakness. And he doesn't hesitate to take his own share of the blame.

6

This poem is certainly from before his Mourning the Gorges suite was written. In this present poem, there is still an undercurrent of appealing to Heaven and to the ancients. Also, the poem is filtered through Meng Jiao's sense of aging and, perhaps, his present illness. At least, he has a sense of illness, in his relation to the world in this poem, which he shares with us. In the Gorges, these elements are absent. He no longer appeals to authority and no longer imposes his sense of self into the poem. The poem is presented as a pure realization of his thought. By the Gorges, Meng Jiao has gotten himself out of the way of his writing. But he is making a personal kind of progress here. So far, historical personages like Qu Yuan and the King of Chu are conspicuously absent. Perhaps he is letting these fall away as part of the "ancients empty words" from his revelation. And the writing is often bolder, freer, even stranger than in earlier poems.

7

A difficulty with this poem is Meng Jiao's use of "dew" or 露. It is also a verb meaning to "show" or "reveal." So it sometimes seems to me to be used as "reveal" in the higher sense of "revelation" because he also speaks of "realization," "realizing" ideals or the failure to do so. "Wind" or 风 is also "manners" or "customs" and so "conservative ideas and expressions." The Chinese of the Tang don't really seem to distinguish between "heart" and "mind." The character 心 is ambiguous this way and so are 怀 and even 肠. It's always kind of both that they are talking about. So choosing an English one is always a diminishing of meaning in the translation.

8

I get the sense that this stanza in a critique of conservatism in poets and their poetry. Meng Jiao does not exclude himself from this critique. In fact, I think he is criticizing what he recognizes in himself. So "age" here is the weight of the past in poetry. This is further proof that Meng Jiao is leaving the 古文 ideals. He consciously shows this with 楚铁 or "bright iron" as this is one way to use the character for Chu without meaning the ancient kingdom. No iron in the time of Chu. The young horned dragon makes, unless my memory is failing, its first appearance here. I have no idea what it symbolizes in the Tang. But it returns with a vengeance in Mourning the Gorges. The Moonviewing Festival is also a celebration of poetry. And Meng Jiao is not impressed with the state of moon-viewing poems. Further down in the stanza, I think he is even criticizing other attempts to free poetry from the past, the "avoidance of food" and the "wearing of leaves." Meng Jiao knows what he wants from poetry. He just can't get it to flow out of his brush onto paper.

9

Even with the bit about lying in bed and feeling weak, I don't think Meng Jiao is old here or sick at all. I don't think he has even remarried yet. The oldness weighing him down is the writing of the past. He's sick of its burden and wants to strike out on his own. But, tellingly, he would like to be followed out there as well. It is a mistake to make too much of Meng Jiao being some cold, harsh outsider. He had plenty of poet friends. Even those, like Han Yu, who disagreed with his ideas, truly liked him. Just look at Han Yu's epitaph for Meng Jiao. They were like loving brothers. And in his official work, Meng Jiao had more support from his superiors than Bai Juyi ever got. I think Bai Juyi was larger than life to his superiors, who were known to quote him without knowing who they were quoting. Meng Jiao was not a poetry-star, like Bai Juyi and Yuan Zhen. But if you were around him, you liked him and his poetry.

10

I have said that Meng Jiao was an idealist. But perhaps that is just the cynic's way of expressing his own lack of idealism. So let's be clearer. Meng Jiao believed in the importance of poetry, that it could free the mind. Poetry cannot save a civilization. It can only save the individual. Most people will indeed howl if you try to open up their congealed thought. It's the gathering audience that contains ones listeners, those who would like a higher mind. You can see that Meng Jiao does not see poetry as separate from the realities of the world. He is aware of the pain at hand, as well as in the distance. I think his reference to empty bellies is literal as well as figurative. Bai Juyi had the distance of sympathy. Meng Jiao has the immediacy of empathy. This final verse puts the kay-bosh on PRC claims that Meng Jiao was an anti-Confucian proto-Marxist. Meng Jiao's thought was steeped in Confucian virtues. He did not break from the past. He broke from sentimental, weak nostalgia. He broke from the Tang conventions binding him to the rules of couplet and quatrain. He trumpeted the impotence of the Qin, which is the impotence of the Ming and of the Xian (that would be the current dynasty - 现代.)

Like the women poets of the Tang, Meng Jiao has fallen victim to shallow interpretation based on the comments of later writers taken out of context or, if not out of context, then translated anachronistically. The proponderance of primary sources for Meng Jiao is his own poems. Before I started translating him, no one had translated more than ninety of his poems. And, so far as I have seen, all such translations were tainted by those shallow preconceptions I just mentioned. We now have half-again as many Meng Jiao poems as when I started. But with over two hundred remaining, we can hardly say we know Meng Jiao.


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