孟郊诗
Poems of Meng Jiao
Index
吊卢殷
Mourning Lu Yin
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诗人多清峭 饿死抱空山 白云既无主 飞出意等闲 久病床席尸 护丧童仆孱 故书穷鼠啮 狼藉一室间 君归新鬼乡 我面古玉颜 羞见入地时 无人叫追攀 百泉空相吊 日久哀潺潺 |
Many poets climb the pure heights where They starve to death embracing their mountain. White clouds are already masterless, Flying away, thoughts carefree. Sick so long, I'm like a corpse on display, Cared for by my feeble houseboy. Rats gnaw at my favorite books and Every room in the house is a mess. You came back to a village of the newly dead And told me I still looked the same. I was embarassed to be at the end of life With no one I could cling to. At the hundred springs, we mourn in vain As our long sad days flow on. |
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唧唧复唧唧 千古一月色 新新复新新 千古一花春 邙风噫孟郊 嵩秋葬卢殷 北邙前后客 相吊为埃尘 北邙棘针草 泪根生苦辛 烟火不自暖 筋力早已贫 幽荐一杯泣 泻之清洛滨 添为断肠声 愁杀长别人 棘针风相号 破碎诸苦哀 苦哀不可闻 掩耳亦入来 哭弦多煎声 恨涕有馀摧 噫贫气已焚 噫死心更灰 梦世浮闪闪 泪波深洄洄 薤歌一以去 蒿闭不复开 登封草木深 登封道路微 日月不与光 莓苔空生衣 可怜无子翁 蚍蜉缘病肌 挛卧岁时长 涟涟但幽噫 幽噫虎豹闻 此外相访稀 至亲唯有诗 抱心死有归 河南韩先生 后君作因依 磨一片嵌岩 书千古光辉 贤人无计校 生苦死徒夸 他名润子孙 君名润泥沙 可惜千首文 闪如一朝花 零落难苦言 起坐空惊嗟 耳闻陋巷生 眼见鲁山君 饿死始有名 饿名高氛氲 戆叟老壮气 感之为忧云 所忧唯一泣 古今相纷纷 平生与君说 逮此俱云云 |
Chattering and more chattering, But the moonlight is eternal. New things replace new things, But spring eternally brings the flowers. Winds from the mount of tombs call "Meng Jiao." Autumn on Song Mountain, we bury Lu Yin. The dead in Mount Mang's tombs here are All mourning even as they turn to dust. This mount of tombs is covered in brambles But my tears come from suffering. I can't warm myself at smoky fires And my strength left me long ago. From afar, I lift my cup of tears and Pour them on the pure Luo's banks. More tears as I lift my heart-broken voice. Sadness kills long-parted friends. Wind is howling through the brambles. Bitter sadness shatters everything. I don't want to hear such sadness. Covering my ears, I hear it anyway. I'm crying too much to sing as I play And my tears only make me feel worse. Ah, me, I'm all burned up. Ah, death, my heart more beaten down. I float through a glittering dreamworld Where waves of tears form deep whirlpools. The flowering wild onions are gone and The wild yellow sage blooms no more. I've placed my seal upon the deep forest, Left my mark upon the mountain roads. Now my days no longer give me light And the moss clothes the ground in vain. Pity an old man without a son Whose flesh is devoured by ants, Lying twisted at long-life's end, Weeping and weeping in the silence. In the silence, I hear tigers. No one comes here anymore. My only family left is my poetry and I brace my heart against death's return. With you gone, I have only My Henan friend, Han Yu, to rely on. He polishes the heights with the brilliance Of a thousand works of ancient writings. This unthinking younger generation Brings bitterness and boasts we die in vain. Their fame may profit their descendents While your fame now merely fades away. It's so sad, your thousand verses Vanish like a morning's blossom. Scattered are the words you suffered for. My respect for you sighs in vain. I hear a baby born in a dark alley But my eyes see you on Lu Mountain. Starving to death has made you famous, A hungry fame in a high pure atmosphere. I'm a stupid old man with a strong old spirit, Feeling like a sad, sad cloud. In this sadness, only tears. Past and present fall like rain. All my life, I've talked with you. Now here I am with only these clouds. |
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初识漆鬓发 争为新文章 夜踏明月桥 店饮吾曹床 醉啜二杯酿 名郁一县香 寺中摘梅花 园里翦浮芳 高嗜绿蔬羹 意轻肥腻羊 吟哦无滓韵 言语多古肠 白首忽然至 盛年如偷将 清浊俱莫追 何须骂沧浪 前贤多哭酒 哭酒免哭心 后贤试衔之 哀至无不深 少年哭酒时 白发亦已侵 老年哭酒时 声韵随生沉 寄言哭酒宾 勿作登封音 登封徒放声 天地竟难寻 同人少相哭 异类多相号 始知禽兽痴 却至天然高 非子病无泪 非父念莫劳 如何裁亲疏 用礼如用刀 孤丧鲜匍匐 闭哀抱郁陶 烦他手中葬 诚信焉能褒 嗟嗟无子翁 死弃如脱毛 |
Our temples first turned white Fighting over new ways to write. At night, we'd walk the moonlit bridge Or drink ourselves to sleep in a wine shop. Drunken, weeping in our cups, Your fame spread across the county. Mid-poem, we'd gather plum blossoms, Cutting fragrant flowers in the park. You were addicted to green vegetable soup And thought nothing of eating a fatty sheep. You chanted without wasting a rhyme And spoke with deep feelings of the past. Suddenly, old age arrives And steals our prime of life away. Good and bad are now beyond us. Why should we scold the surging waves? Former worthies cried in their cups Drinking to escape their weeping hearts. We later worthies try to hold it in But sadness comes and it's always deep. When the young cry in their cups, It brings on their white hair. But when the old cry in their cups, Their rhymes will follow deeper ways. I send you the words of a drunken poet. This is no finished public rhyme. Polished poems shout out loud in vain. Heaven and Earth have no place for them. People like us rarely cry together. It's the others who get together and howl. I begin to understand how the silly Birds and beasts make it to Heaven. Without a son, I'm sick but without tears. Without a father, I've tried hard not to work. How about I cut off all relations and Use courtesy like I would use a knife? You lie fresh in a lonely grave, Beyond pity, embracing sweet sadness. You annoyed those who had to bury you. Your integrity, how could they praise it? Sighing here, a son-less old man, Death would be only shedding my skin. |
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圣人哭贤人 骨化气为星 文章飞上天 列宿增晶荧 前古文可数 今人文亦灵 高名称谪仙 升降曾莫停 有文死更香 无文生亦腥 为君铿好辞 永传作谧宁 |
The sages weep for the virtuous Whose bones change into the stars, Whose writings fly up to heaven and Glimmer among the constellations. The writings of the ancients are inestimable. But modern works can also be divine. Your name is among the banished immortals, Rising, falling, never will it cease. There are writings death makes more fragrant. Without them, life would be decay. For you, I ring out these good words, Forever spreading your peaceful quiet work. |
-- 孟郊
废话
1
This is the last of Meng Jiao's poems in the scrolls. He begins it with two lines, slightly modified from the preceding poem, which is something new for him. White clouds are symbols for those who have freed themselves and go where they will. It sounds like Lu Yin came to see Meng Jiao just after Meng lost his wife and child. The "hundred springs" are often an image of the netherworld. Meng Jiao seems to be writing from the brink of death.
2
Meng Jiao is outside Luoyang on Mount Mang where there are tombs of kings reaching back through the Han and Qin. Lu Yin must have returned home, died, and been buried on or near Mount Song which is the most important of Daoism's Five Peaks. I wonder how much of all this crying and physical suffering is real and how much of it is literary conceit. Meng Jiao has been too active to have been physically sick for a long time. I suspect his sickness and his suffering refers to how he feels about the world, the decline of culture, the ongoing violence of his times. Our age's mind is consumed by thoughts of sickness and medicine. So there is a danger of anachronistically attributing similar thinking to the past. Meng Jiao has been sick and weepy even as he guides men through the wilderness. I think sick and weepy is a metaphor. One more thing we learn here is that Lu Yin went home and starved himself to death.
3
This verse gives us personal day-to-day details of Meng Jiao's friend. It's rare we get details like this. Even someone as direct as Meng Jiao never goes into the real details of life. We never will know what he carried with him in the wilderness. Or what was on his writing table and walls. I wish there was a poet who, like Hokusai, would just tell us all the things he sees. We can see here, near the end of Meng Jiao's time on earth, that he is hard-pressed to deal with losing his ten-year-old son. And his wife. He's all alone. His friends, one after another, are dying. Yet there's still a lot of life in this poem.
4
Meng Jiao has done what he can for Lu Yin. But Lu Yin didn't make it through the years. I can't find him referenced as a poet anywhere. It's kind of a miracle that we have any poems at all from fourteen hundred years ago. Somehow, we have three hundred and eighty one poems of Meng Jiao. And this is the last of them.