The Court Officials

by Brett Rutherford

“Son of Heaven!”
     “Your Majesty!”
            “Great King!”
they shouted, knelt,
and timidly approached.

The Court was dark.
Weeks of mourning,
chaos, actually.
Moths fluttered
around the silk tapestries,
the throne, untenanted,
gathered dust.

“You are here about the Rituals,”
he answered from shadow.
They could not see his face.
“Do as was always done.
Consult the oracles, lay out
the calendars of mourning.

“I would as soon hear bells
and laughter again,
street-vendor songs outside
the walls, the drums and gongs
of the theater. When mourning
ends for all, it need not end for me.”

“Son of Heaven, all will be done
as in your father’s and grandfather’s
time, and as all China has done
since the First Emperor’s time.”

He nods. He waves a hand
to dismiss them.

They do not remove themselves.
“Your Majesty!" one calls again.

“Is there more?”

                           “We beg to ask
what you mean to do
about — about the woman.”

“Who knows of this?” he asks,
in a tone of ice and danger.

“Every bird repeats it. Each branch
of the willow tree sings about it.”

“Well, then,” he sighs. “I mean
to make her Empress. Call her
Empress Zhou the Younger.”

One courtier groans, another
beats his head against the plank
he carried to make appeal.

“Oh, call her a concubine!”
one begs. “A consort, a consort!”
the other two implore.

“With her dead sister, my Empress,
she has equal rank. Why now,
should I not honor and elevate
one who is devoted to me alone?”

“Because of the gossips,
O Son of Heaven, you do not know
what calumnies they invent,
lies you invite by circumstance.”

“Explain.”

“They will make her out worse
than Empress Wu. Tales they invent
will have her murder the young price,
hating a nephew born to the throne.
They will say she lured you with magic,
used drugs and sorcery to seduce,
so that you could not tell
one woman from another.

They will say she procured poisons,
and one will come forth and say
she bought them of his neighbor
who sells those drugs and charms
that cancel wives and children.”

“She is above reproach.”

“A thousand lies will follow her
like clouds of angry gnats,
and a thousand times repeated
they will be truths to many.
Spare her and you, we beg you.
Do not elevate this woman.”

After a long pause, in which
the three officials trembled,
he stiffly ordered:

“These three things I command.
Publish the Calendar of Rituals.
Announce the elevation
     of Empress Zhou the Younger.
These things done, collect
     your pensions.

"The gossips you warn me about
are you. "