KangXi Drinks Tea From His Porcelain Eggshell Teacups

KangXi Emperor, Age 45.

by Brett Rutherford

Adapted and expanded from the paintings and poems on twelve Qing Dynasty teacups.

FIRST MONTH

Snow comes, but so too,
the early blossoms,

plum, while down below
the delicate narcissus

buds up among the
bamboo, indestructible.
My sheltered courtyard
encourages such early
arrivals, out of season.

Nature, I ask,
or sly gardening?

Even when all is still,
fragrance moves on its own
from branch to ground,
along the cold rocks,
and then inside
to the teacup’s rim.

 

SECOND MONTH

Evening rain pelts
the abundant flowers
on the apricot trees.

Their stamens radiate
attentive tendrils alert
to every falling drop.

Sunshine or mist
paint watercolor

upon the pale hue
of the white petals.

Am I smelling them,
or does the rain wear
a subtle perfume,
enchanting, seducing
me to put down the teacup,
disrobe, and walk
in the gentle downpour?

 

THIRD MONTH

Peach blossoms should really
employ a whole orchestra
to boom out good news
with their coming.

In Heaven, the peaches bloom
and bear fruit at the same time,

the food the monkeys covet
which makes the gods immortal.

Peach blossoms should fall
with gongs and drums,
alerting the farmers
to renew their labors,
and calling back
the welcome song-birds.

To drink tea beneath
a grove of tall and blossoming
peaches, requires company.
An emperor-to-be
invites two heroes
to drink and swear oaths
of eternal brotherhood.

The peach is the witness
to their youth and honor.

 

FOURTH MONTH

One must be up at dawn
to see the sly peony
untighten its grasp
on night, and drink
the dew of the immortals.

Once it has opened in full,
one almost faints
at how it makes a sphere
of petals a rose would die
to emulate, how ants
come climbing up the stems
to do it worship.

Only the finest
and most intricate
scholar’s stone
is worthy to stand
beside the peony,
a sculpture carved
by wind and water,
carried from afar
to be one peony tree’s
shade, shelter, and
companion.

An emperor seeks
one such, among
his counselors.
The maddening scent
mocks those who work
in the Jade Hall, where
wisdom is sought.
In vain.

 

FIFTH MONTH

Heavy as rocks,
the pomegranates hang
from their sturdy tree.
Yellow spheres aburst
with wet red seeds,
will ripen and blush
at their own abundance.

Their silhouettes,
as I drink tea,
wave back and forth
on the white-washed wall
behind me. The seeds
as plentiful as bees
in a hive, cannot
be counted. Taste
pomegranate, and tea
is, for a moment,
forgotten. It is
the garden’s concubine.

 

SIXTH MONTH

Look down below!
Who notices, in mud,
the lowly lotus root
like unearthed jade?
Yet when it bursts to bloom
the whole world worships it.

Two mandarin ducks
swim in the pond.
Their adoration
of the lotus flower
is in the way small waves
make furrows out
beneath their feet,
the small bows
of bill to water.

Only the crane,
from its cloud-perch
can see the symmetry
of lotus, water, shore,
the two brown ducks,
and one aged and lanky
Emperor, cup in hand.

 

SEVENTH MONTH

I sit. I have my tea.

All wish me well,
or so they say.
A seventh cup
they place before me.
Pale tea moves
second-hand as water
boils, goes through
the yi xing teapot

(mine alone),

and into the eggshell
porcelain. No hand
but mine has touched it.
All wish me well,
but there is always poison
to worry about.
Mistrust of doctors, too,
if any of them
have better friends,
and younger,
than my Imperial self.

This cup is adorned
with the most reliable
flower: the rose.
Although its heady
oil, perfume’s bounty,
makes me sneeze,

I respect its tenacity.
Outliving winters,
indifferent gardeners,
and even dark
conspiracies,
one shade against
another fratricide,

it just keeps going on.

Just as this emperor
goes on from year to year
outliving all prophecies

the tough rose
blooms anytime
it pleases.

 

EIGHTH MONTH

Just as the hare
has many progeny,
the guihua tree,

osmanthus, from
the far-off Himalayas,
flowers and branches
endlessly, spring,
winter, and fall.

An evergreen,
and fragrant too,
it flavors a tea
and an autumn wine
the Emperor is known
to savor in private.

Two things at least,
the world shall never
run out of: rabbits
and guihua trees.

 

NINTH MONTH

O Chrysanthemum,
the only way
to enjoy you,
is with a wine-cup
in hand. Oh, very well,

the Emperor may hold
his favored tea-cup full
of tea made from dried
chrysanthemum petals,

while everyone else
goes mad with its liquor.
Nature joins in.
Insane butterflies
flutter about, bees faint
with overdose of pollen.

Two hands, two eyes
are not enough
to paint the things
chrysanthemums
make happen.

A thousand year’s memories
crowd into one day
of sun-burst petals.

 

TENTH MONTH

Indoors,
among the orchids,
the Emperor takes tea,
on the day of many
bloomings. Stubborn,
the pampered ladies
withhold their colors,
refuse to unfurl
their sumptuous hoods.

Unlike the concubines
who come when summoned,
the orchids, keep close
and treasured just as much
as ladies of high families,

cling to rock and branch,
shy and particular.

And then, one day,
the eunuchs come running:

They are ready, Majesty,
the orchids are blooming!

 

ELEVENTH MONTH

Unable to sleep,
the Emperor walks,
unseen,
and unaccompanied
by guard or eunuch,
in a sheltered garden.

Is that Narcissus
he sees in moonlight,
breaking the soil
like waves against a dike?
Will they bloom so soon?

Dare they?  Is this
the Daoist gardener’s
laboratory, where plants
are made to bloom at will,
a fox-fairy’s paradise?

At sudden turn, he sees
the old gardener, lamp
in hand, who, horrified
to face his master,
trembles and begins
the humbling know-tow.

“Stand, you old magician,”
the Emperor intones.
“You have not seen me.
I was not here. Those were not
flowers seen too soon.

I have had entirely
too much tea.”

TWELFTH MONTH

Out and about
when he should not have been,
the Emperor paced
in a poorly-heated room,
hands cupping
the small tea-cup
as much for warmth
as for the taking
of such a small dose
of reality.

His feet trampled frost.
His eyes took in
the beauteous pattern
of ice on flagstones,
the tendril’d snow
at grass’s edge.

The sun had risen.
The abundant blossoms
of wintersweet lit up
with the morning’s own
gold. Not a leaf
in sight, but all those
petals sprung
from out bare branches.

How rare among
the flowering trees
was this, which bloomed
defiantly
while others shivered,
barren, for warmer days.

 

EPILOGUE

Twelve cups,
in a rosewood cabinet,
each for a lunar month.
On delicate eggshell
porcelain, so thin
that light shines through,
an artist painted such scenes,
and a poet described them
calligraphy beneath the glaze.

The cup was for
one drinker only. He,
the Son of Heaven,
ate all his meals alone,
drank tea alone —
not from the coarse cups
seen at the state banquets —
from these small, footed,
porcelain bowls.

With the rising of each moon,
one cup was taken
discreetly away
and replaced with the next.

Figures On A Kangxi Vase

by Brett Rutherford 

The world might end
and they would not know it.
High on the slope
of a sacred mountain,
six mortal scholars gather
in a mansion garden.

Master Liu
has arranged everything
to mitigate
the heat of August.
A folding screen
conceals sun’s glare
and shades the table
where four enjoy
cold wine
from an antique flagon.

Hand turns around
blue-figured vase.
Gao, the exiled
high official, arrives
with a banned book
close to his heart.

His nephew, young
and handsome, feels
overdressed, and would
prefer a shady glen
to nap in, hatless
with collar undone.

A small boy, restless,
another bored
participant,
would rather be at
his bow and arrow,
or watching the play
of wild horses, but here
the slow pace of old men
calling to mind a poem,
leafing the pages to find
a Confucian dictum,
must suffice.
Honor it is
to be with the wise.

Hand turns around
blue-figured vase.
Crouching, a servant
adds coals to fire
beneath the brazier
meant to refresh
brown yi xing teapots.

Low walls zig-zag
the edge of Liu’s estate.
Trees overhang
the painted screen,
branches identical
to what the artist
painted there.
How daring to place
a painted forest
before a real one!

Hand turns around
blue-figured vase.
In mountain fog
the distant peaks,
even the edge
of a nearby precipice
are lost in white
as pale as porcelain.

All is foreground
and an extended hand
might touch cold glaze,
tracing the curve
of the limits of existence.

Frozen this once
and forever, the old men
debate the merits
of poetic styles,
deliberate
on whether things
are permanent
or fade to nothing.

Cool wine, warm tea,
the rise and fall
of a remembered song;
muffled, the dim roar
of falling waters;
calligraphy called up
from nothing to drop
upon a blank page.

Hand turns around
blue-figured vase.
A day too hot
for any other purpose.
The world might end
if eyes sought deep
into the denser mist,
a yellow glare,
gnat-flecked, in which
two butterflies hover,
weightless, immobile,
and terrified.

What is this blotch
upon pure whiteness?
The burning sun
craving to show itself?
A distant city
ablaze, invaded?
The exploding scream
of a split atom?

Gao, the book!
Be quick, my friend!
Find the right page,
the words to read,
the names of gods,
if gods there are,
we need invoke.

Here in the clarity
made plain by tea,
a thousand years
of wisdom adheres.
So long, the afternoons,
so short the nights
of bug-bite August.

Here they are safe,
scholars, nephew,
boy, and servant.
Hand turns around
blue-figured vase.
They need not fear
the world might end.

[A hand-painted blue-and-white vase depicts scholars in a garden. Behind four seated scholars, a painted, folding screen protects them from sun and wind. The trees painted on the screen are the same as those around them. All is foreground – no distant landscape is visible, as though the scene were surrounded by fog. Under the vase’s glaze, a large open area has a slight yellow cast, and the vase painter has drawn little dust-flecks around the edge of the mysterious glow, and placed two butterflies hovering there. What looks like a defect in the color of the clay seems purposeful, and we are asked to explain its cause, and why the scholars seem suspended in the foreground.]

 

 

The Azaleas of Ningpo

by Brett Rutherford

Legendary and lethal,
the azaleas of Ningpo
cover the hillside, a blaze
of color intoxication.

Goats roaming there,
chewing the blossoms
and leaves, fall down
into a stupor.

A black vase
topped with a burst
of red azaleas,
pink hearts
of rhododendrons:
a death-warning.

A medicine as like
to kill as cure,
used sparingly;

a tiger face
not seen amid
the shrubbery;

fox-fairy perfume,
the fatal allure
of a woman met
by the road-side;

the pain, in exile,
of thinking of home.

Beware the azalea!

** This poem cites several Chinese names for the azalea: "thinking of home," "goat-stupeying flower," and "tiger flower."

Things I Never Dreamt I'd Eat

by Brett Rutherford

Duck feet, sea slugs,
lotus root dry
     from winter mud,
eggs lost and found
inside a clay pot
     a "hundred years,"

baby eels, slimy
     (aphrodisiac?),
tree-bark fungus
afloat in soup,
shark fin, dried
     octopus snack,

Old Pock-Marked
     Mrs. Chen's
tofu (the scholar's
rocket fuel),

mysterious red
sausages, pork
belly, bok choy,
a stinky fruit
(durian) milkshake,
noodles transparent,
tentacular,

the act of faith
that no one you know
has, after a thousand cuts,
wound up inside
today’s pork bun —

all these I know,
but I draw the line at
stew of a black dog,
and jellyfish.

Alone in the Temple

by Brett Rutherford

      The Emperor Li Yü,
           after the death of Empress Zhou

Lord Buddha, why?

Silence.

Incense rising,

a vertical line

no breeze disturbs.

It is as though the world

stopped breathing.

That there is no answer,

is an answer.

Lord Buddha, why?

Look everywhere

inside our realm.

Are not the finest

peaks surmounted

by your temples?

Have we not carved

you into cliffs, filled

grottoes with shrines?

Do we not have as many

monks as scholars?

As many Bodhisattva

figures as soldiers?

As many stupas

as bell and drum towers?

As many prayer wheels

as chariots?

Those who would topple the last

of Tang -- they do not know you.

We fight, but of all deaths

this one death I cannot

accept with calm resolve.

She is gone! Her shroud

is even now rolled up

and carried to the chamber.

I must watch as her ashes

rise to the heavens.

Have you not taught

there is no peace

until there is no will

to war? I have no will

to war. Love was my

barricade. It fell.

The people, in loving me,

loved you, What now,

Lord Buddha, what?

Who the illusion,

you, or I?

          (Written to follow Poem 21 of my Li Yu cycle)

Choosing No One

 by Brett Rutherford

     after the Chinese of Li Yü, “Yü Lou Ch’un”

The ladies have spent all evening preparing.

Just after the bath, the flesh

of consorts and concubines is white

as snow, with here and there

the blush of peach or cherry.

They all line up in the Spring Palace.

It is all for my benefit.

The phoenix flutes trill plaintively,

to make them long for me,

and me, for them,

water and cloud apart

yet yearning to touch.

As they retire, to await

decision and summoning,

the Rainbow-Dress song

goes the rounds, and fades

as the musicians stop

before each chamber.

Which one has overdone it

and fills the air with the scent

of her alluring powder?

Which one thinks

she has found a love-charm?

The aroma of their desire,

compounded by chemists

with thousand-year perfumes,

is enough to make me dizzy.

In my dark pavilion, I tap

the balustrade. Sometimes I just

pick a number; there are so many!

But then I choose: I tell

the servants to light no lanterns,

to let the red candles flutter out.

The wind is up. My horse

is in high spirits. Tonight

I will ride, and we

shall tread the moonbeams!

Autumn Day-Dreams

 by Brett Rutherford

     from the Chinese of Li Yü, “Wang Kian Nan” (Poem 3)

When, of an afternoon, I nap

before my tea at four o’clock,

I dream of forests further south

where Fall lights up the hills;

of yellow, brown bands a thousand miles

long, a vast brush-stroke across

the rivers and mountain gorges;

of all the red of maples touched by frost.

Night falls.

Among the reeds, a boat,

abandoned, sits idle,

with drooping sail,

and from above,

a figure barely seen

lifts up his flute

on a moon-crowned terrace,

a song for no one

in particular.

Thirteen Scorpions

by Brett Rutherford

     A Monologue of The Emperor Qian Long (1711-1799)

I bid you welcome
to the Summer Palace,
to this, my garden
behind the Hall of Paintings,
and now that you,
Father of the Jesuits,
have learned enough Chinese
to dine in my presence,
we shall dispense with bowing,
kowtowing, and the like.

We can speak now,
man-to-man,
though it best be said
as god to man
for unlike your god
who is infinitely
receding, I am here.

I am the Son of Heaven.
For as long as I can recall
I was the Son of Heaven.
Father and Grandfather
Yong Zheng and Kang Xi
thought themselves so,
but they were merely
openers of the way;
they conquered and pacified,
thrust Manchu virtue
into the soft Han underside,
gave steel
where only bamboo
had sufficed.

Truly, I am the most
interesting person
who has ever lived
(or so the eunuchs
daily remind me).
I have composed,
or signed my name to
some forty thousand
poems; well-schooled
in martial arts,
I could break a man
in two, bare-handed.

I hunt. The deer tremble.
I make war. Unruly tribes
flee back to their borders.
My name and seal
are on ten thousand vases.
My visage has been painted
by European as well as Han.
My armies have gone as far
as Lhasa, whose Dalai Lama
bows to me —
                        What’s that?
Disaster in Burma? Vietnam
refusing to bend the knee?
You are impertinent, Holy Father —
time will tell — but here,
the servants come with tea,
dainties and dumplings.

Let us leave politics, and speak
of other things. You know,
I have learned to speak Tibetan,
and their Yellow Church priests
shall be in charge of my tomb
when Heaven takes me.

But tell me true, Jesuit Father,
how just as Manchu conquered Han
yet all of China has ravished me
with art and music and poetry
so that I scarcely have time for war,

does not your little god pall
before the sight of our mountains,
the mists on the Yellow River?
You eat like a Chinaman. I see
the way you eye that eunuch
(I will send him ’round
with the rest of the dumplings
if that pleases you? It does?)

Is China not
the world’s true center? Not Rome!
Although I ban your faith
and god, and god’s wife, and son,
and those ever-bleeding saints
are not permitted here — you stay.

You collect our pottery,
Song, Tang, Yuan, and Ming.
Calligraphy eludes you
and yet two hundred scrolls
of painted landscapes
have found their way
into the Jesuit dwelling.
Does China not always win,
like a great concubine,
by merely standing by in beauty?

Now, walk this way with me —
hand me the cricket jar,
Old Chen! — and we shall see
in this otherwise barren
rock garden, one standing stone.
gongshi, we call these —
how weathered and worn
and full of cavities it is!
Step up to the boundary
of crushed cinnabar
and look close! They come!
They come! Cringe not,
for the thirteen scorpions
are bound to the stone
and the gravel around it.
It is their universe.

Wonder you may
how I have ruled
for sixty years; how none
have raised a hand against me
and succeeded.

One duke, one general,
one martial arts fanatic,
two who called themselves
my brothers and blood-princes,
four who put up banners
and called me usurper:
see how they scurry
away from my shadow!
Emirs and khans and kings,
four I did not behead or slice
now wriggle here and rip
at another’s bodies
with fangs and venom’d tails.

The one on top? You know
I had three empresses, consorts
fifteen, and half a dozen
concubines. Only one was bad,
and there she basks. Nothing
would please her more than progeny.
A concubine
the only female on an island
with twelve male reprobates.
They will have nothing
to do with her. Ironic, no?

They will go on this way
forever, so long
as my hand feeds them
now and then.
Watch, as I lift this jar
that contains their dinner,
as I rattle the lid
just ever so slightly,
like cats they come running.

Step back — the cinnabar
line is poison to them
and they cannot pass it.
Old Chen, come hold
the Jesuit Father up.
He seems a little dizzy.
Is your taste too fine
to witness thirteen scorpions
fight over and eat
a solitary cricket?
It is only an insect.
It is their favorite food.

The dumplings, perhaps,
have made you sleepy.
Rest on this garden seat.
Is this not like
the place you call Purgatory,
where evil-doers reside
on a mount of their iniquities?
Just such a thing, in miniature,
a Daoist master made for me.

Come, take a look
as I uncover the victim.
What say you? Empty?
Why so it is.
Look deeper, Father
of the foreign devils’ god.
Slough off your priestly
robes, your cross and jewelry.
Do you not feel the change?
Catch him, old Chen!

I am the Son of Heaven.
I have always been
the Son of Heaven.
I am the most interesting man
who has ever lived.

And you —
     whom I hold
     in my hand and toss
     into the hungry horde —
you
are a cricket.

 

The Orphaned Vase

by Brett Rutherford

Two decades or more I have studied it:
that double-dragon-handled vase
from my New York hauntings.
Bought from a Chinese store
about to shut down forever,
its unsold vases stacked,
dust-covered orphans
that had never found a home.

Today I regard it with new eyes
and undertake to learn its origins,
and what the wriggling floral shapes
and tangled leaves can tell me.

Amid the leaves are Treasures:
a thick square book in a silken cord,
a checker board awaiting two players,
two rice-paper scrolls tied up
blank for calligraphy to come,
and two rhinoceros horns
predicting happiness
for the vase’s owner.

It was intended, no doubt,
to be a young scholar’s first vase,
its carmine glaze the blush
of a young man’s ardor,
its unknown, ardent flowers
all petals open to the sun.

It is all good omens, but no one came
to the old shop on Mott Street
to carry it off; no scholar sipped
his oolong tea and wrote poems
in the cheer of its good karma.

Close scrutiny reveals
some hint of the reasons why:
one of the dragon handles
is missing the monster’s snout.
Some accident — a fall, a ricochet
of a bandit’s bullet, broke off
this beast’s ability
to snort a blowtorch back
at a would-be attacker.

One also sees
the whole vase is a-tilt.
It leans some five degrees
off vertical, so doomed to sit
like someone whose leg
is shorter than the other,
a tipsy vase just ready
to take a tumble.

It is a century old, I guess.
It is lonely for its maker,
for the fine-haired brush
that painted it, for the wheel
on which it was cast lopsided.

It comes from a kiln
that exists no more. One day,
a Japanese bomber took sight
at the Wude Sheng factory
and all was blown
to smithereens.

Thou, sad vase,
thou, snoutless dragon,
thou, limping, tilted vessel,
orphan of war and history.

Old Scholar Under Autumn Trees (Anniversarius 48)

Translated  by Brett Rutherford

     From a Chinese Painting and Poem by Shen Chou, 1470 CE.

Gone, gone, gone. Gone to the west
wind, the leaves have fled. Still, there is
sun, still some shade under half-
disrobed maples. I loosen
my collar, I just lean back
and read my book. No clock, no
appointments, all idleness.
It is a long book; I have
all the Autumn ahead
To read, or to gaze on up
at the sky that pulls on me.
Here below -- or on up there --
who knows what I shall do next?

Op. 1050, January 19, 2020, from a 2006 FB post.

The White Tiger

Each Autumn, I write one or more "seasonal" poems, adding them to an ever-growing cycle called "Anniversarium: The Autumn Poems." This is the 34th in the series. In Chinese art and folklore, the white tiger is a symbol of autumn (white itself is the color of funerals and mourning in China).

ANNIVERSARIUM 34: THE WHITE TIGER

I dreamt — it was no dream! —
for there, on the floor, the melted snow,
the window-lattice broken, night coals
from the brazier scattered everywhere.

I dreamt he was there beside me:
the great white cat, tiger of Siberia,
lord of Manchurian wastelands. He,
my servant comes trembling to tell me,
has taken up residence
at the far end of the north pavilion.

Ah! let him stay! Bring me my sword?
No! my pen and scroll! I must wash
my thoughts with a draught of tea.
Renew the fire. Refill the yi xing
pot with pale white tea leaves.

“He is Death,” my servant tells me.
I shake my head and answer:
“He is Autumn, the world’s Fall,
my autumn, the end of my youth.
Where he treads, frost follows,
his breath the snow that fells the wheat
and makes the maples scream
red murder. Long have I known
he would be our guest one day.”

“Repair the window,” old Chen admonishes.
“We shall light torches to keep him off.”
I see two feline eyes
grow larger in the passageway.
“It is too late. A guest once past the threshold
must be offered food and lodging.
The tiger may come and go as he pleases.”

I point to where the great beast enters.
My servant issues a piercing cry.
Ignoring us, the monster, white
in the whiter moonlight, lies down
on the warm tiles of the coal hearth.
“You see, old Chen, how he reclines.
I do not think he means to harm me.”

Chen bows and backs to the doorway,
and as he closes the double door, calls back,
“Tomorrow brings terror to the countryside.
The tiger will kill the fallow deer,
and, should you venture forth by daylight,
he, pretending not to know you,
will turn on you as well. An old poet
is sweet fruit after a venison banquet.”

’Twixt Venus and Jupiter, one moon
hangs crescent; ’twixt sleep and dawn
the great beast cradles me, and I, him;
sword, fang, and claw forgotten, defying
our double death; a frozen interval,
two hearts abeat, and four lungs breathing.
I dream of being a great beast, rampant;
the tiger dreams of the calligraphy brush,
the tail-flick ink flow that places songs
on paper, words in the ears
of unborn readers and listeners.

I taste the blood in his mouth, the flex
of great legs that can overleap all prey;
he tastes pale tea and delicate sauces,
the savor of rare wine in a heated bowl.

As dawn breaks through,
the Heaven-tree, the willow boughs,
the distant pines sigh, shiver, shrug:
they will fight for a green day,
bird-harboring, leaf-tipped
to the lambent sunbeams.

Somewhere, out there, the tiger
drags Fall behind him as he hunts
life down with a panther frenzy.
Great clouds of birds assemble and flee
before him; cave, den, and warren
pull in their denizens for the long sleep
of winter. He leaves a trail
of antlered skeletons, doe-widows,
trees clawed clean of summer.

My place is here with lamp and teapot.
I wrote a poem. I rolled and sealed
the rice-paper scroll, wiped clean
the brush and closed the ink-jar.
This is not just any autumn’s beast.
There is some cause for which
he spared me, and was not my Autumn
or the death-breath of my winter.
No, he is the Tiger of Entropy:
he drags tornados, kill-winds
and glaciers behind him.
He would blink out
the world’s great cities if he could;
he would strike down the moon
as his ball-of-string plaything,
leave earth an orphan
in a sunless cosmos.
If I let him.

Tomorrow, while he sleeps,
wherever he sleeps —
and I see the place,
in the shade of the pines
beyond the placid river —
I shall send Chen for my finest mount,
my armor and my banner men.

I shall ride forth,
my flag the three-no poem of summer
defiance: No to death,
No to surrender, No to the idea
that all things must have their autumn.

I have sixty-one years
as I leave the pavilion.
I have fifty-one years as I cross
the great wheat fields.
I have forty-one years
as I track the red-maple forest.
I have thirty-one years
as I ford the river,
horse-neck and saddle
just barely above the water.
I have twenty-one years
as Chen passes me
the great halberd
of my ancestors.

Now, I shall kill the White Tiger.