Written While Dying

 

by Brett Rutherford

     Emperor Li Yu (937 – 978 CE)

Now I am dead.
There is no other way
to write this poem
except backwards.

Because Taizong
resented my last poems
(who would not yearn
for what he has lost?) —
because I am said to be
all things considered,
a better poet.

Because I cared less
with each day’s passing,
wife torn from me,
a weeping shell of herself,
since she was raped
by the Song Emperor.

Because I will not address
that personage correctly,
because I am now called,
not former Emperor, not King,
not as Li Congjia, the name
my father gave me,
the name to which
all people and foreigners
knelt and kow-towed,
but by an epithet:
Marquis of Wei Wing
(Lord of Edicts Disobeyed). 

Now I am dead,
because my generals came
with warlike strategy,
and I dismissed them,
preferring my evenings
in the Poets’ Pavilion,
with painters and artists
who fled to me from
every other kingdom.

Now I am dead,
because my captive brother
summoned, implored,
my travel to Song’s capital,
and I went not. Instead
I sent poems and art,
the best ambassadors
of peace and accord.

Now I am dead.
No armor did I don,
no chariot ascend
when the invaders came.
I was in the temple,
composing a poem,
surrounded by monks,
incense, and prayer wheels,
when they broke in
and seized me. Where
was the magic, then?

Now I am dead,
because wise counselors
wanted me strict, cruel
and cunning, like those
who raced to crush
our borders. Refusing,
I sent them home.
Some killed themselves
in honor’s name.
It was I who killed them!

Now I am dead,
who tried to have
one woman as wife,
and her younger sister, too.
As for the two women,
one died, and then I married
the other. Is that not honorable?
Did I not carve,
with my own hand
two thousand characters
on the Empress’s tombstone?

Those who forbade my love,
and my second marriage,
I sent home to their villages
to live until their beards
touched ground.
Now their ghosts haunt me.

Now I am dead,
because I drank a cup,
an overflowing cup
of heart-warm wine,
best of the southern
vineyards, I was told.

Because my dishonored wife
put her pale hand
upon the celadon vessel
to taste it first,
and a soldier pushed
her aside and said,

“This wine is for one,
from the Emperor’s table.
The Marquis only must drink.” 

“I am not thirsty,” I said.

“The Marquis must drink.
I must say at his table
that you have tasted it,
and in full proof of pleasure,
have drained it to the dregs.”

Now I am dead,
because the willows of home
have wept two years for me;
twice have I left unswept
the tombs of my fathers;
twice have I failed to lift
up in the dead’s honor
a flagon of chrysanthemum;
and twice has the Lunar Year
come and gone in a place
that no longer has my name.

Peace be to you, Song Emperor,
and to all peoples. I am still
King of leaves and petals, Lord
of moonlight and sudden breezes.
Who will they read
a thousand years from now?

Now I —

  

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. "

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)

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.