孟郊诗

Poems of Meng Jiao


Index

峡哀十首

Mourning the Gorges, in Ten Parts

1


昔多相与笑
今谁相与哀
峡哀哭幽魂
噭噭风吹来

In former times, we laughed a lot together.
Now, who can even mourn together as one?
In these gorges, I mourn the spirits of the dead
And their words come back in a shouting tumult.

堕魄抱空月
出没难自哉
齑粉一闪间
春涛百丈雷

Falling souls embrace a useless moon.
Those who drown leave all difficulties behind.
Their broken bits are suddenly separated
By spring torrents in a thousand feet of thunder.

峡水声不平
碧沲牵清洄
沙棱箭箭急
波齿龂龂开

The gorges' river's voice is never peaceful.
Emerald currents lead to clear whirlpools.
These sandy banks are lined with nervous bamboo
And the waves' teeth grind them as they pass.

呀彼无底吮
待此不测灾
谷号相喷激
石怒争旋回

Ah, other vortices will have no bottom and
You wait here for unpredictable disaster.
Rock walls howl at each other in the violent spray
While furious rocks vie to spin you round.

古罪有复乡
今缧多为能
字孤徒仿佛
衔雪犹惊猜

Of old, it was a crime to return to one's native place.
Now, we are bound to it like criminals with chains.
Writing all alone like this seems useless.
My nurturing of vengeance still startles in its violence.

薄俗少直肠
交结须横财
黄金买相吊
幽泣无馀漼

Heartless customs, short on sincerity,
Are used for ill-gotten gains.
Gold buys a lot of mourners with
Distant tears that only flow skin deep.

我有古心意
为君空摧颓

I am of the ancient way of thinking
While you fall idly into decay.

2


上天下天水
出地入地舟
石剑相劈斫
石波怒蛟虬

Up and down the sky goes the river.
Rising and descending go the boats.
Stony swords hack everything to pieces.
Stony waves are the flood dragons' ire.

花木叠宿春
风飙凝古秋
幽怪窟穴语
飞闻肸蚃流

Trees and flowers enfold its venerable spring.
Violent winds congeal its ancient autumn.
Strange and distant is the language of its caves.
Hear the wind scatter the dusty pupae of its words.

沉哀月已深
衔诉将何求

I deeply mourn beneath this moon already dark.
What hope is there for these accusations I harbor?

3


三峡一线天
三峡万绳泉
上仄碎日月
下掣狂漪涟

Three gorges and a single thread of sky.
Three gorges and ten thousand threading springs.
On the slopes, babbling constantly,
Flashing down, are these madly swirling flows.

破魄一两点
凝幽数百年
峡晕不停午
峡险多饥涎

With my spirit broken in one or two places,
I seem frozen in remoteness for a hundred years.
The gorges are dim and foggy even at noon.
The gorges' danger dries out my mouth with fear.

树根锁枯棺
孤骨袅袅悬
树枝哭霜栖
哀韵杳杳鲜

A tree's roots lock a bitter coffin,
Delicately suspending its orphaned bones.
The tree's branches weep their lonesome hoarfrost,
Like a rare dirge in a distant darkness.

逐客零落肠
到此汤火煎
性命如纺绩
道路随索缘

Exiled, I am withered and broken,
Arriving here, in danger and vexation.
My life is like a twisted thread
Of a road that follows the demands of fate.

莫泪吊波灵
波灵将闪然

Don't weep or mourn fate's twists and turns.
It is fate's nature to twist you suddenly.

4


峡乱鸣清磬
产石为鲜鳞
喷为腥雨涎
吹作黑井身

The gorges' discord rings out in clear chimes.
Producing rocks like fresh fish scales,
The spray is like a fishy, spitting rain
That blows from this black well of life.

怪光闪众异
饿剑唯待人
老肠未曾饱
古齿崭嵓嗔

This strange scene changes every moment.
Its hungry swords only wait for men.
Its old bowels have never once been sated.
Steep walls of ancient teeth are steeped in anger.

嚼齿三峡泉
三峡声龂龂

From the chewing teeth of Three Gorges' springs,
The voice of the Three Gorges is gnashing.

5


峡螭老解语
百丈潭底闻
毒波为计校
饮血养子孙

The gorges' cruelty has long butchered language.
You hear it at the bottom of thousand-foot pools.
Poison waves, like competing ideas,
Drink blood to raise their offspring.

既非皋陶吏
空食沉狱魂
潜怪何幽幽
魄说徒云云

Since no one can cultivate their banks, the gorges'
Famine plunges my better soul into prison.
A secret strangeness looms in the distance
As my poorer soul chatters vainly on and on.

峡听哀哭泉
峡吊鳏寡猿
峡声非人声
剑水相劈翻

The gorges smile at the wailing of its springs.
The gorges mourn the lonely, spouseless gibbons.
The gorges' voice is an inhuman voice and
Its river's swords hack and overturn.

斯谁士诸谢
奏此沉苦言

So who are all the scholars I should thank
In this memorial of drowning, bitter words?

6


谗人峡虬心
渴罪呀然浔
所食无直肠
所语饶舌音

Misrepresenting men is the heart of the gorges' cruelty.
Its thirst for evil overflows its banks.
The nourishment it offers is without sincerity.
The language it offers is a blathering sound.

石齿嚼百泉
石风号千琴
幽哀莫能远
分雪何由寻

Stony teeth prattle at a thousand springs.
Stony winds howl like a thousand taut wind-blown strings.
I cannot hold back my righteous mourning.
How can I seek out my revenge?

月魄高卓卓
峡窟清沉沉
衔诉何时明
抱痛已不禁

A high dark moon dominates the sky and
The gorges' caverns are dark and chill.
When will these thoughts I harbor be understood?
Already, I cannot bear the mourning of this death.

犀飞空波涛
裂石千嵚岑

Sharp and swift, these great useless waves
Split the rocks of a thousand lofty small hills.

7


峡棱剸日月
日月多摧辉
物皆斜仄生
鸟亦斜仄飞

The gorges' sharp edges slash day and night.
Every day, they openly destroy all they can.
By them, all things are tilted and narrowed.
Even the birds are tilted and narrowed in flight.

潜石齿相锁
沉魂招莫归
恍惚清泉甲
班烂碧石衣

Submerged rocks, like interlocking teeth,
Tease drowned souls who cannot return,
Souls distracted by the clear springs of their exams,
A rotten ranking clothed in green jade.

饿咽潺湲号
涎似泓汯肥
峡春不可游
腥草生微微

Sobbing with hunger, the slow flow howls,
Its saliva like wide, circling pools of human manure.
In the gorges' love you cannot float.
The lives of rank wild-flowers are very tenuous.

8


峡景滑易堕
峡花怪非春
红光根潜涎
碧雨飞沃津

In the gorges, it is easy to fall and be destroyed.
The gorges' blossoms are strangely lacking joy.
Their red glow originates in hidden spite
As a jade rain falls from the fertile heights.

巴谷蛟螭心
巴乡魍魉亲
啖生不问贤
至死独养身

Hope of emolument is in the cruel ones' hearts.
Clinging to homeland is what the demons hold dear.
Those enticed do not ask what is worth doing.
To your dying day, you alone can nourish principle.

腥语信者谁
拗歌欢非真
仄田无异稼
毒水多狞鳞

Who believes in their rank and fishy language,
These perverse songs that are happy but untrue?
Cramped fields produce a different harvest.
Fish in poisoned rivers grow hideous scales.

异类不可友
峡哀哀难伸

I cannot befriend the ways of others.
Mourning in these gorges, my sadness works against trust.

9


峡水剑戟狞
峡舟霹雳翔
因依虺蜴手
起坐风雨忙

The gorges' river's swords and halberds are fierce.
The gorges' boats soar through claps of thunder.
Because everything lies in the hands of mean men,
Boatmen rise to salute them in the midst of danger.

峡旅多窜官
峡氓多非良
滑心不可求
滑习积已长

Traveling the gorges are many exiled officials.
Of the people in the gorges, many are no good.
You must not strive for a cunning heart.
Of cunning practice, we have long had enough.

漠漠涎雾起
龂龂涎水光
渴贤如之何
忽在水中央

Full of loneliness, the spittle mist rises.
Full of dispute, the spittle river gleams.
How will it be for the thirsty rising generation
When suddenly they find themselves midstream?

10


枭鸱作人语
蛟虬吸水波
能于白日间
谄欲晴风和

Evil and winecups write men's words and
The cruel ones suck in the waves thus made.
In broad daylight, these writers can flatter
And their manner seems almost pure and mild.

骇智蹶众命
蕴腥布深萝
齿泉无底贫
锯涎在处多

A startling idea is the stumblingblock of many,
The accumulated stench announces their dark fruit.
The source of such work is a bottomless paucity.
This toxic spittle is found in many places.

仄树鸟不巢
踔萏猿相过
峡哀不可听
峡怨其奈何

Freedom doesn't nest in these constricted trees.
Striving for excellence, it rises above the swinging gibbons.
Mourning the gorges, I cannot smile.
The gorges' resentment, what can it do to me?

-- 孟郊


废话

1

Whoa. Seems to be a backstory to this poem. Maybe it will come out of the background as the ten poems progress. All we have so far is a dead body, professional mourners, and an urge for vengeance. And a lot of surprising and new vocabulary. Lines 21 and 22 can actually be alternatively translated, "The heartless customs of a few rectums are bound up in ill-gotten gains." Not something you would get from Bai Juyi. Although the violent turn between verses four and five is very Bai Juyi, as the actual topic of the poems rises up and takes control. This is my first poem by Meng Jiao and my first impression is that he is Bai Juyi's evil twin.

2

No evidence of any backstory here. Just resentments in Meng Jiao's bosom and the dusty pupae of the river's words. The gorges in these poems are the Three Gorges on the Yangzi: the Startled Pool upstream, the Wizard in the middle, and the Western Tomb at the bottom. But this, being a Tang Chinese poem, may not be about the gorges at all. They could represent something else. We can only watch and see if Meng Jiao reveals anything deeper to us. For now, we have the gorges, the possible dark backstory with accusations and revenge, and the poet's lonely writing with the dusty pupae of words.

Just as I had no idea what Yu Xuanji's poems would reveal her to be, I have no idea where these ten poems of the gorges are going. These ten poems were my only experience, a few years ago, with Meng Jiao in translation. I can't remember a thing about those poems. But that is the reason I am beginning with the gorges in my pursuit of who Meng Jiao is, as revealed by his poems.

3

The idea of fate does not appeal to the young. By Chinese counting, I am sixty now. And fate seems as good an explanation as any for how lives do not turn out the way you expect them to. There is some kind of tradition in the West that makes one responsible for how one's life turns out. If a life turns our poorly, then its owner is a failure. But we do not choose the world we are born into or the larger forces at work within it. One can choose to go with the flow of those forces. But they may not be kind to you in any case. Perhaps, fate is only a name for the result of one's moral choices within the greater temporary forces of one's time. Failure, then, would be a badge of honor for some who stood against the pressure of bad times -- and were overwhelmed.

But I am forgetting the poem. The gorges only get a single quatrain of this verse. The dead man in our possible backstory gets a quatrain too. The rest of the poem goes to Meng Jiao himself who begins to describe himself and how he arrived at the writing of these ten poems. For many poets, exile was actual exile. But, as far as we know, Meng Jiao was, first, a free wanderer and, later, a pampered poet with a series of sinecure positions provided by supportive "patron" officials. His bitter exile is something other than being sent to the malarial south for stepping on the wrong toes. I suspect it is larger and more spiritual than that. I suspect these poems are beginning to address the universal.

4

Here for the first time, Meng Jiao devotes the entire verse to the gorges. It's a little disappointing. We learn nothing more of why he is here, of his desire for vengeance, of the orphaned bones in their bitter grave. Perhaps he is setting the stage for something to come.

5

It is becoming clear that Meng Jiao's three gorges are not the three gorges on the Yangzi. Are they the literary world? Is the dead body in the backstory his literary effort? Is his urge for vengeance his bitterness at not having the recognition he desires? Is Meng Jiao a lonely gibbon who has lost his wife? We can't even answer this last one. He was married at the time he died. But was he married before he became an official?Was he married more than once?

One thing I can say is that Meng Jiao's poetry, in some ways, resembles T. S. Eliot's poetry. He passes into a language of metaphor which speaks, not of willows and autumns, but of language and words.

6

In the first line, "misrepresenting" could also be "slandering." I went back and forth between the two. But the former seems to fit the poem better. Slander is more distinct than blather. But misrepresentation is rather blatherful. The first two characters of line 12 (抱痛) are the first two characters of a fixed expression for mourning the death of one's son. Is this the dead man with the orphaned bones? Is Meng Jiao's son literal or figurative here? The intention of the last line is clearly "lofty" "high small hills" where the idea of "small" is included. There are plenty of other ways to have lofty hills and mountains without this chosen nuance. So who are these blathering and lofty small hills? Is this their thankyou from the last poem?

Perhaps the gorges are the literary world or poetry's worldly audience, which in Tang times was largely made up of of poets and their peers. But this is still only a guess. Tang poets did not try to remove ambiguity. They slathered it on and expected you to work your way through it. "Oh, you found that," they might say. "But did you find this? I put the one underneath the other." And here we are, over a thousand years later, excavating like half-blind archeologists.

7

Meng Jiao clearly has the literary world in mind in his gorges metaphor now. That world distorts all it touches, hiding behind the system of accepted knowledge in accepted form. You would think I was exaggerating with the third quatrain. But it is all literal. The last character in line 10 (肥) is manure, which came from the public toilets. The first two character of line 12 (睲草) are, first, "fishy-smelling" or "rank" and, second, "grass and the wild-flowers growing in them." That was the connotation in Tang times. Then 生 is "existence" or "lives" and 微微 is "very faint" or "very humble." All in all, this is certainly a colorful verse.

8

I think we must keep in mind as we read these poems that Meng Jiao cares about joy and truth. His criticism is not destructive. It does not deny the existence of the joyful, the true, or the good.

Throughout the verses, Meng Jiao has used various characters of dragons, young dragons, river dragons, and flood dragons. At a certain point, one of these characters, which ordinarily occurs in a bigram for dragon, was used on its own. And alone it meant "cruel" or "cruelty." From that point on, I have used his subtext of cruelty in interpreting dragons. This series of poems is no more about dragons than it is about gorges.

9

To me, in this verse and the previous, Meng Jiao is overcoming his anger, his desire for vengeance and replacing it with his love of literature and of justice. He may scorn those who salute the mean men who control the spectacle of literature in his time. And he acknowledges that many in the literary world are simply no good. But he is encouraging others to avoid the cunning and clever, not scorning those who have already taken this path. And his sense of justice is concerned for the future, including the young writers of his own time.

10

I've come to see that Meng Jiao is mourning the literary world as a whole and have adjusted the title accordingly. The first two characters of line 1 (枭鸱) both mean a kind of owl. This could be a forgotten bigram. But that would be on the surface. The first character also means "something evil" as owls were seen to be symbols or spirits of evil. And the second can also mean "winecups." Meng Jiao would have been aware of both the surface here and of the depths and would have used other characters if he meant different depths. There are plenty of owl characters to go around. It seems that throughout the verses the teeth (齿) are the works that are written. And the "gnashing" or "disputing" of 龂龂, which has the teeth as radical, is the discord of the works as they clash amongst themselves. The gibbons (猿) we have seen once before and they had outlived their spouses as widows and widowers. Chinese rivers, in Tang times, were bounded by trees and the trees were full of screaming gibbons.


Index