At the Orchid Pavilion

 

by Brett Rutherford

Adapted from Lantingji Xu, “Preface to the Poems Collected from the Orchid Pavilion” by Wang Xizhi (303-361 CE, Jin Dynasty)

In fourth century China, the Jin emperor presided over a picnic of poets in which all sat alongside a gentle stream. Wine cups were placed on large leaves and dropped into the stream. Any time a wine cup came within reach of a poet, he was required to take it up and drink it, and/or write a poem on the spot. My friend Ping Geng obtained for me a ceramic replica of one of the little cups used at this famous poetry gathering. The event yielded an anthology and here is my adaptation of the dedicatory poem. The artwork depicts the poets idling along the stream-bank.

The great Jin rules at the world’s center
(may it always be so), and this late spring,
in the ninth year of the Yonghe Emperor

we have gathered at the Orchid Pavilion,
in the cool north of Kauiji Mountain
for the ritual of purification, as always

the Literati gather, ink-pot and brush
as ready as a bannerman’s weapon.
Mistake not the power of these seated men.

We have climbed the steep hills
to reach this mountain slope. The woods
are dense with shadowing pines.

 The slender bamboo is emerging
and the flowing stream has swollen
with the rush of melting snow

into an artificial rivulet that bends
and turns across a levelled field
where we spread out in groups

so that each poet’s arm can reach
to touch the limpid waters
on which a broad leaf boat

carries an oblong wine-cup.
If one such vessel comes your way
you are compelled to take it,

if not, you must write a poem.
If excellent, the emperor applauds;
if not, the waters carry it off.

Although no music wafts
among the pine trees, winds
at work on fervent blossoms

and the sweet harmonies of words
suffice to make us happy. Hearts
rise in a bell-symphony of joy.

The sky is free of clouds.
The air is fresh, no hint of smoke.
The breeze is moderate and cool.

Above us, hidden in blue
a billion stars burn ever on.
Among us all, our poems are few,

Although they number tens
of thousands by now. Our eyes
harvest the landscape for images.

Too quick a lifetime passes
when one is among friends,
not years enough! Not years Enough!

We have each our own way with words,
our chambers and all the things in them.
What one collects, another scorns,

Yet out of such diversity there comes
the pleasures and satisfactions
with which we regale one another.

How quickly, alas, this all may pass’
as we grown old, our young desires
seem weary or over-sated;

What once we trafficked in
seems shallow now. We call
the auctioneer to clear things out.

And trailing ever behind us,
the unacknowledged guest,
is grief, its shadow ever-growing.

Long life, short life,
the better lived, the sooner
it seems to come to calamity.

Alas, the ancients knew best:
The only two ultimate things
are the birth that brought you

And the death that takes you away.
Alas that it must be so! Far back
into the ancient works, the same lament.

It saddens me that the worthy dead
came up with no answer for me.
I cannot express how sad this is.

It is absurd to say that death
makes all life meaningless.
Look! One more leaf has fallen!

Which one? Which one? Oh who can tell?
To live long is surely better
than to have scarcely lived at all,
 

To read and weep, one hand
unrolling the scroll, the other
outlining the share of each character:
 

Is this not how one lives
in more than one lifetime
inside the minds of the departed?

And just as we read them,
some future reader
will stumble upon these words

And say, “That poet. I think
I know him. Our minds are one.
I might have been him, he, me.

How many poets are here today?
How many brushes at work,
how many completed verses?

Oh, gather them up? All of them!
Let he who made the rivulet
on which the wine cups float,

Extend it beyond our sight,
to carry gently downward
all of our torments and doubts

Into the far-off river, touched
by swallows and dragonflies,
into the great sea of eternity.

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.

Preface to "Emperor Li Yu, A Life in Poems"

by Brett Rutherford

TO THE READER

After almost two hundred years of glory and accomplishments, the great Tang Dynasty of China collapsed in 907 CE. The culture of Tang lingered on in the Southern Tang kingdom, however, ruled by three generations of the Li family. In Southern Tang, the grand traditions of art, music, poetry, and painting thrived, and Buddhism flourished.

Li Yu, the last ruler of Southern Tang, did not inherit his father’s military inclinations, and when he assumed the throne at a young age, the realm was shrinking as provinces were ripped away by rival states, the most rapacious of which was the new Song dynasty. Tributes, gifts, and hostages made the tension between Song and Southern Tang more and more fraught with peril.

A poet, dreamer, and pacifist, Li Yu was totally unsuited to rule in a time during which China was being split into “Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms.” Isolated in his palace compound, he devoted himself to writing poetry, and enjoyed not only the favors of his Empress and concubines, but also entered into a scandalous love affair with his wife’s younger sister.

Li Yu invited poets and artists from all the war-torn states to Southern Tang, where he housed them as honored guests in their own palace of the arts. More and more Buddhist temples and monasteries dotted the landscape.

The poem cycle, Emperor Li Yu, A Life in Poems, relates the tragic fate of Li Yu, his Empress, and the “other woman,” the kind of royal soap opera that fascinates because the outcome is the end of an entire nation. Only 39 poems of Li Yu survive, and every word of them has been woven into this narrative cycle. They are regarded as among the saddest and most emotional poems written in China, and they are sad because this poet, who had everything a mortal could wish for, lost everything.

Captured by the Song armies after the siege of Nanjing, Li Yu became a state prisoner, shown off and ridiculed as a former king and would-be emperor. When his new poems offended the Song Emperor, he was ordered to drink poison.

 

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 —

  

What Kind of Poet?

 by Brett Rutherford

      after Li Yu, Poem 39

What kind of poet am I
    who cannot bear spring flowers
     or the flush of autumn?

What kind of poet am I
     who shuns the moon’s
          beckoning,
when all I can do
     is to ask it,
“Do you see my lost kingdom?”

What kind of poet am I
     who no longer retells
     the exploits of his father,
     the daring of ancestors,
     the courage of mothers?
Having no seal, I shall
     soon enough be nameless.

What kind of poet am I
     who can no longer adorn
     a painting with calligraphy,
     or compel a painter
     to illustrate his words?

Who cares what I think,
     or what I have suffered?
No one.

Without me, the carved
jade balcony and winding stairs
may still be there, but those
who walked them
    will be less than ghosts
if no one writes of them.

Do some back home
     still read my lines
and ask of one another
the measure of Li Yu’s pain?

How many pieces can one
be sliced into?

How many drops flow
into the Qinhuai River,
and the Yangtse too?

Those numbers ought to be
just about right.

Empty Is the Past

 by Brett Rutherford

     after Li Yu, Poem 38

Does some persistent bumblebee
come to my fluttering eyes
expecting dream-nectar?

How disappointed
     he must be!
I am a sour well,
    a soap-work,
    an iron forge,
    a leather tannery.

I haven’t a good word
    or thought or prayer
    for anyone.

Sorrow I cannot escape,
     except in the dreams
that make me even more
     miserable.

What wakes me up?
What forces me
    to greet another day?

There is a thread
     that pulls my eyelids open,
made from dried tears
    that stick to my face
from cheek to beard.

O to stand atop
    an autumn terrace
with someone, anyone,
     beside me!

Of Trysts Gone By

 by Brett Rutherford

     after Li Yu, Poem 37

Now that I know too much
I am almost embarrassed
to watch the Spring unfold.

Flowers doing what flowers do
remind me of trysts gone by,
of acting without rhyme or reason.

The trusty willow trees shelter me.
My confidants, they have seen it all,
and they do not trouble themselves
with random love affairs.

Their green-and-gray shagginess
brushes against my weary head.
In their cool indifferent shade
I could sleep all day.

Places and Names

by Brett Rutherford

     after Li Yu, Poem 36 

Best are the names
the places themselves tell you.
Like candles that gutter
     up and out,
or weeds borne randomly
     on errant waves,
one dream recurs.

I see the land my fathers won,
but in it are men unfamiliar,
costumes and accents wrong.
I try to introduce myself,
but I am waved away
    as a madman.

Heaven has set me adrift,
not to be known,
                        but still to know
the reason for each place’s
naming. This little wood —
can it be anything except
the "Bower Awaiting Moon"?
This westward-facing spot
is nothing if it is not
"The Shading-Flower Terrace."

Will all of Tang be truly gone
when all the names are lost?

  

Am I Awake?

 by Brett Rutherford

     after Li Yu Poem 35

Endless rain falls
     in waves and ripples.
Spring is finally retiring.

Yet I shiver beneath
     the silken coverlet,
wary of braving cold air
     before the sun’s warming.

Am I awake? Exile
     no longer,
I long for old pleasures.
As sudden as it was morn
it is evening. I lean
against the parapet,
my mountains, my rivers
clear in view.

All too easy
     was the departure in haste,
     not a moment to spare
     in backward-looking —
yet how it ached to see the sights
    coming, one by one,
as the old places returned to view.

Beyond the hill, the flood waters
     gather up all the refugee
     petals, rushing them away
as Spring invades and conquers.

Where does Spring die, I wonder —
on Earth, or in the Heavens?

Then up I sit, and rub my eyes.
This is no house of mine.

No scrolls, no paintings, no wall
filled top to bottom with poetry!
Again and forever, those dreams of home!