孟郊诗
Poems of Meng Jiao
Index
寒地百姓吟
Bitter Cold Among the Common People
（为郑相其年居河南畿内百姓大蒙矜恤）
(I spent a year near the capital of Henan. This poem is in sympathy for the great suffering of those people.)
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无火炙地眠 半夜皆立号 冷箭何处来 棘针风骚劳 |
Without fire to warm their beds, Half the night they stand and sob. Where did this death blow come from That turns the wind to thorns and needles? |
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霜吹破四壁 苦痛不可逃 高堂搥钟饮 到晓闻烹炮 |
Frost blowing in through all four broken walls Makes suffering hard to avoid. In the great hall, they strike the bell for hot tea And at dawn you hear them cooking. |
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寒者愿为蛾 烧死彼华膏 华膏隔仙罗 虚绕千万遭 |
The cold wish they were moths and could Burn to death in the cooking oil. Cooking oil, like the veil of immortality, lying Beyond the endless, empty repetitions of mortality. |
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到头落地死 踏地为游遨 游遨者是谁 君子为郁陶 |
In the end, they fall dead to the ground Like the heavy tread of tired wanderers. Who are these wanderers? They are the lords of sadness. |
-- 孟郊
废话
Bai Juyi wrote more than one poem of common people suffering in the cold. He would describe them in plain, clear language. Then he would describe his shame for not sharing their suffering. I think he was sincere. But Meng Jiao shared their suffering, at least to some extent. And he does several things here Bai Juyi never did.
In lines 7 and 8, he shows the people struggling together to make warm drinks and what food they could afford. In the third verse, he describes their absolute despair, expressed in their wishing for death. And the third verse continues with their yearning to pass beyond the cycles of suffering, which their common perception of religion promised them, into a fullness of life. But that yearning is unfulfilled. In the final quatrain, Meng Jiao tells us what it sounds like when a body falls down dead to the ground. So he was standing closer to the suffering than even Bai Juyi had stood.
And finally, Meng Jiao manages to elevate the poor and express the magnitude of their suffering together in one phrase: "They are the lords of sadness." To me, this is an extraordinarily literary poem. Meng Jiao is able to use his experience and all of the facets of his individuality and place it in the service of others, while entirely effacing himself.