Here Was One

No. 9

A Poem of Changgan

Dear Reader,

Written evidence of poetry exists from the second millennia B.C.E., but the scholarly consensus is that it probably predates writing and civilization. Poetry has been a dynamic art form, originating from an oral tradition—passed down through generations via singing or chanting—and then moving across languages and cultures through translation after the development of writing.

Our piece today comes from an acclaimed Chinese poet who lived during the Tang Dynasty, Li Bai (c. 701-762). While not particularly innovative in terms of form or content, Li Bai’s poetry displays remarkable brevity, precision of thought, and emotional clarity, all of which have made him a favorite of translators. One of his most famous short poems, “Zazen on Ching-t’ing Mountain,” reads in its entirety:

The birds have vanished down the sky.
Now the last cloud drains away.


We sit together, the mountain and me,
until only the mountain remains.

This week’s work is slightly longer and more evocative, but equally clear:

A Poem of Changgan

By Li Bai

My hair had hardly covered my forehead.
I was picking flowers, playing by my door,
When you, my lover, on a bamboo horse,
Came trotting in circles and throwing green plums.
We lived near together on a lane in Ch’ang-kan,
Both of us young and happy-hearted.

...At fourteen I became your wife,
So bashful that I dared not smile,
And I lowered my head toward a dark corner
And would not turn to your thousand calls;
But at fifteen I straightened my brows and laughed,
Learning that no dust could ever seal our love,
That even unto death I would await you by my post
And would never lose heart in the tower of silent watching.

...Then when I was sixteen, you left on a long journey
Through the Gorges of Ch’u-t’ang, of rock and whirling water.
And then came the Fifth-month, more than I could bear,
And I tried to hear the monkeys in your lofty far-off sky.
Your footprints by our door, where I had watched you go,
Were hidden, every one of them, under green moss,
Hidden under moss too deep to sweep away.
And the first autumn wind added fallen leaves.
And now, in the Eighth-month, yellowing butterflies
Hover, two by two, in our west-garden grasses
And, because of all this, my heart is breaking
And I fear for my bright cheeks, lest they fade.

...Oh, at last, when you return through the three Pa districts,
Send me a message home ahead!
And I will come and meet you and will never mind the distance,
All the way to Chang-feng Sha.

Background

Li Bai often wrote poems from various viewpoints. Here, he adopts the persona of a young woman in Chang’an—where he lived at several points during his life—who is waiting for her husband to return.

The first three stanzas move sequentially, from the woman’s childhood through her marriage in adolescence and the departure of her beloved on a perilous journey. The fourth and shortest looks toward the future, with an almost desperate turn and a request that her husband send a message home so she can meet him at another city along his route.

What It Offers

Most Western readers encounter Li Bai through Ezra Pound. Pound translated and published a collection of Chinese poems in his 1915 book, Cathay. “A Poem of Changgan” appears within the collection, though Pound—who was working from another translator’s notes and not the original text— titles it “The River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter,” and its content differs significantly from the more recent (and probably more accurate) translation above. Nevertheless, both versions capture the incredible sense of longing in the young woman’s voice. We get a sense that a terrible tragedy has befallen her husband, and that at some level she knows it.

This is—I think—one of the most beautiful aspects of poetry. Li Bai died almost 1300 years ago. He lived in an entirely different culture with verse forms and poetic conventions that are no longer extant. And we have access only to secondhand, heavily mediated versions of his poetry, which can be translated—even by speakers of the same language—in completely different ways.

Even so, as with the poem above, some magic of Li Bai’s originals remains. The emotion breaks through. We can see and feel what he describes. We are moved and changed—here, by the thought of a young woman, waiting in her garden, as the seasons change and time passes, wanting nothing more than a message or sign that her husband is still alive.

In a sense, by reading “A Poem of Changgan,” we become a surrogate for the missing husband. We receive the letter meant for him, and we become linked to the woman—really Li Bai himself—despite the distance. If nothing else, it’s a good reminder that our mutual language of love will always survive, no matter how far we travel, no matter the dangers we face, and no matter what else may be lost to translation or time.

*****

What is the meaning of life? That was all—a simple question; one that tended to close in on one with years, the great revelation had never come. The great revelation perhaps never did come. Instead, there were little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark; here was one.

Virginia Woolf