孟郊诗

Poems of Meng Jiao


Index

古意

In the Old Style


荡子守边戍
佳人莫相从
去来年月多
苦愁改形容

A wanderer lived near a border town
Where the beautiful people ignored him.
As the years rolled over and over,
His face came to match his bitterness.

上山复下山
踏草成古踪
徒言采蘼芜
十度一不逢

Up and down the mountains,
His feet wore bare his paths.
He said he gathered wild herbs
But that was mostly idle talk.

鉴独是明月
识志唯寒松
井桃始开花
一见悲万重

Beneath a golden full moon,
All he knew was the cold pines.
The sight of first peach blossoms
Filled him with sadness inside.

人颜不再春
桃色有再浓
捐气入空房
无憀乍从容

His face was worn and haggard
As the peaches came to full bloom.
Innocent and calmly, unbidden,
Fragrance filled his lonely room.

启贴理针线
非独学裁缝
手持未染彩
绣为白芙蓉

And it filled his head with needlework,
Though he'd never sewn a stitch.
He carefully kept from spoiling
His embroidered white hibiscus.

芙蓉无染污
将以表心素
欲寄未归人
当春无信去

An hibiscus without a blemish
Required a pure, white heart.
It's as if the young faith of this wanderer
Had never left his heart.

无信反增愁
愁心缘陇头
愿君如陇水
冰镜水还流

Without faith, one's troubles redouble.
A sad heart is the cause of it all.
The real man is like this cold river.
Beneath its ice, the river still flows.

宛宛青丝线
纤纤白玉钩
玉钩不亏缺
青丝无断绝

Windings of pure white silk thread.
Fine sharpness of pure white jade needle.
A pure needle never will fail you
And the purest of thread never breaks.

回还胜双手
解尽心中结

A return to the power of your hands
Dissolves all the knots of the heart.

-- 孟郊


废话

I think Meng Jiao wrote this in his thirties, long after his first wife had died. Men in their thirties think they are old. Men in their sixties know better. I also think this is a somewhat autobiographical poem. Meng Jiao's first wife seems to have died while he was away. Maybe he came back to her grave and then wandered on. Maybe his grief simply set him wandering.

He wandered from his late twenties until he was forty. Being an idealist and, perhaps, some self-pity, would have set him apart from his peers in the border towns he came to. As for the needlework in the poem, I almost want to say he couldn't make that up. Either he did it himself or some other wanderer he knew did it. The last two lines suggest he was the embroiderer. Maybe his mom had done that when he was young. Or his wife had. He would have been smart enough to figure it out.

I also get the feeling there is Daoism in this poem. The character 青 is often the "color of nature" (which color comes from context) and sometimes is used as "youth." The connection here is that both are the expression of what we, and not they, would call "Nature." For them it was more the "expression of the Creator," the Creator being the source of the Dao. The jade of the needles, the purity of the thread, and the references to faith, all make me think of the Dao.


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