The Late Poems of Meng Chiao

Meng Chiao, David Hinton

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9780691012360
  9780691012377
• eBook ISBN:
  9780691217727
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

Late in life, Meng Chiao (A.D. 751--814) developed an experimental poetry of virtuosic beauty, a poetry that anticipated landmark developments in the modern Western tradition by a millennium. With the T'ang Dynasty crumbling, Meng's later work employed surrealist and symbolist techniques as it turned to a deep introspection. This is truly major work-- work that may be the most radical in the Chinese tradition. And though written more than a thousand years ago, it is remarkably fresh and contemporary. But, in spite of Meng's significance, this is the first volume of his poetry to appear in English.


Until the age of forty, Meng Chiao lived as a poet-recluse associated with Ch'an (Zen) poet-monks in south China. He then embarked on a rather unsuccessful career as a government official. Throughout this time, his poetry was decidedly mediocre, conventional verse inevitably undone by his penchant for the strange and surprising. After his retirement, Meng developed the innovative poetry translated in this book. His late work is singular not only for its bleak introspection and "avant-garde" methods, but also for its dimensions: in a tradition typified by the short lyric poem, this work is made up entirely of large poetic sequences.

AUTUMN THOUGHTS

1

Lonely bones can’t sleep nights. Singing

insects keep calling them, calling them.

And the old have no tears. When they sob,

autumn weeps dewdrops. Strength failing

all at once, as if cut loose, and ravages

everywhere, like weaving unraveled,

I touch thread-ends. No new feelings.

Memories crowding thickening sorrow,

how could I bear southbound sails, how

wander rivers and mountains of the past?

2

Under this autumn moons face of frozen

beauty, the spirit driving an old wanderer

thins away. Cold dewdrops fall shattering

dreams. Biting winds comb cold through

bones. The sleeping-mat stamped with my

seal of sickness, whorled grief twisting,

there’s nothing to depend on against fears.

Empty, sounds beginning nowhere, I listen.

Wu-t’ung trees, bare and majestic, sing

sound and echo clear as a ch’in’s lament.

3

Moonlight edging through an empty

door, cold and valiant as sword-flight,

startled old bones sit dazed, suddenly

sicker and weaker still. Mourning

insects long for its piercing beauty.

Birds nest high, risking all its light.

A lovely widows arranging old silks,

sobbing alone. It drags up memories,

but I can’t retrace the phantom years.

Frail steps always return home at dusk.

4

Autumn’s here. I’m old and poorer still,

not even a door in this tumbledown house.

A sliver of moonlight cast across the bed,

walls letting wind cut through clothes,

the furthest dreams never take me far,

and my frail heart returns home easily.

Year-end blossoms abandon late greens,

weaving lost splendor into rival swirls,

and in my sick worry, dazed by things,

country walks grow rare. O isolate beauty,

crickets hidden among grasses and roots,

your sense of life grown faint as my own.

5

Bamboo ticking in wind speaks. In dark

isolate rooms, I listen. Demons and gods

fill my frail ears, so blurred and faint I

can’t tell them apart. Year-end leaves,

dry rain falling, scatter. Autumn clothes

thin cloud, my sick bones slice through

things clean. Though my bitter chant

still makes a poem, I’m withering autumn

ruin, strength following twilight away.

Trailed out, this fluttering thread of life:

no use saying it’s tethered to the very

source of earth’s life-bringing change.

6

Old bones fear the autumn moon. Autumn

moon, its swordblade of light– a chill

spirit sits frozen, and helpless against

even a sliver of its light. Widowed birds

build nests for it– blank mirror, drifting

ice bathed in winds of eternity. Afraid

my footsteps may startle away, sickness

vast, I can’t brave ice. Waking into this

pure glistening light, I lie in bed alone,

emaciate and all fear, all heart of fear:

it rinses rivers so clean water vanishes,

renders foul and muddy clear and pure.

When strong, my poems were empty talk.

Now they’re so frail, what is there to trust?

7

Countless strange worries. Old and sick,

a mind’s not the same morning to night,

and autumn insects mourn a failing year,

sobbing tangled echoes I can’t fathom.

My hair thin as autumn grass, a distant

scent moors me to chrysanthemum golds,

but light hurries easily into shadow now,

so how long can this late freshening last?

It’s pointless to regret learning so little.

What good is knowledge against twilight?

Once my talent became clear, their spite

began, so wisdom born of solitude grew

deep early. Guard depth, not appearance:

isn’t that what the ancients all taught?

8

Year’s end in a dry world, autumn wind

starts-up all that arms-and-armor clatter.

Crickets working at song weave no cloth,

and when insects call and call for nothing,

autumn sounds sharpening past midnight,

feeble legs can’t go any further. Once cut,

my black hair is like a garden in autumn:

it never grows back. And childhood’s some

starveling blossom: brightness glimpsed,

never to return. Firm as mountain peaks,

the noble endure. Others bicker over trifles,

threads and feathers. The more they fight,

the more life they lose. The Way of heaven

warns against fullness: it just empties away.

9

Cold dew so rich in tired disappointment,

bare wind lush with sighs and whispers,

it’s deep autumn: the bitter moon pure,

old insects singing their unworried songs.

Red pearls strung branch after branch,

lazy chrysanthemum golds everywhere:

these flowers and trees answer the season,

their cold splendor like another sp...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Mourning Lu Yin
• Cold Creek
• Laments of the Gorges
• Apricots Died Young
• Heartsong
• Autumn Thoughts
• Notes
• Finding List
• Further Reading
• The Lockert Library of Poetry in Translation