孟郊诗
Poems of Meng Jiao
Index
答卢仝
Responding to Lu Tong
|
楚屈入水死 诗孟踏雪僵 直气苟有存 死亦何所妨 |
Chu lies along a dead river where Poet Meng walks on hard snow. Your spirit was upright and enduring. Dead, what can hinder you now? |
|
日劈高查牙 清棱含冰浆 前古后古冰 与山气势强 |
Sunbeams cut the high mountain roses. Pure ridges embrace their frozen snow. Their ice has endured the ages and This mountain's spirit is unyielding. |
|
闪怪千石形 异状安可量 有时春镜破 百道声飞扬 |
I pick my way past a thousand rocky forms. How can one account for their strange shapes? Sometimes, when the ice breaks up in spring Its voices rise up a hundred mountain paths. |
|
潜仙不足言 朗客无隐肠 为君倾海宇 日夕多文章 |
Reclusive immortals are reluctant to speak. But you, bright guest, showed all your feelings. Because of you, sea and sky were overturned By all the poems you wrote by day and night. |
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天下岂无缘 此山雪昂藏 烦君前致词 哀我老更狂 |
Under Heaven, who is without his fate? This mountain holds high its snowy head. I used to trouble you to send your fine poems. Forgive me, old age had made me mad. |
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狂歌不及狂 歌声缘凤凰 凤兮何当来 消我孤直疮 |
But your mad poems were not true madness. Singing them caused the phoenix to rise. Oh, when will this phoenix come again? I vanish into a wound of true loneliness. |
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君文真凤声 宣隘满铿锵 洛友零落尽 逮兹悲重伤 |
Your words really were the phoenix's voice. They filled the passes with their ringing. Your Luoyang friends are fully devastated And I arrive here with sadness's deep wounds. |
|
独自奋异骨 将骑白角翔 再三劝莫行 寒气有刀枪 |
Alone, you strove in different forms. Above these white peaks, you will soar. Thrice again, I urge you not to go. This cold air has a razor's edge. |
|
仰惭君子多 慎勿作芬芳 |
Look up in shame, all your gentlemen. Your caution will never produce this fragrance. |
-- 孟郊
废话
Lu Tong is dead. He was a friend of Han Yu and, apparently, of Meng Jiao. He wrote the Classic of Tea, which may have inspired the Japanese to create the cult of tea and its ceremony. He was known as one of the freest and strangest poets of his time. When he was forty-five, he was in the wrong place at the wrong time and someone drove a nail into his head. Must have been some fight. You really should stop short of sitting on someone's back and driving a big nail into his head. If you can even do this, you've already won the fight. A modern poet would have said something about this violent passing. Meng Jiao only mourns the loss of a cultured friend.
I've been meaning to say that Meng Jiao is the only poet I know to use 答 in his titles. This means "to answer or respond." I think he uses it in a figurative sense. He also often uses 见寄 in a lot of titles. This is a case of what I call a lost bigram. The two mean "to see" and "to send." So it might indicate "sending something for someone to see." The problem is that bigrams are not simply additive. They very often (usually?) don't simply mean the two characters' meanings strung together.