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!

 

Lichen

 by Brett Rutherford

     after Li Yu, Poem 34

Save sorrow for what is gone forever,
a wise one advises me. Creature
of habit that I am, everything
here depresses me. The sight
of Nature ought to soothe and heal,
but Grief is my looking-glass.

The humble lichen,
     so fond of rocks
     and branches,
ascends the neglected
     stairs as well.
I do not disturb
     its melancholy advance.

The curtain, edged
     with pearls, sways
     lazily, thin barricade
against the autumn breeze.

No one strides in
    with orders or requests,
pushing aside the cloth,
nor do soft steps
     of timid feet pause
and await my summoning.

I had a Golden Saber once;
like me and my pride,
it is someone’s trophy now.

I had a mansion of jade,
a palace of dark
     chalcedony,
pavilions too numerous
     to catalog.
Looted and desolate,
they cast long shadows
upon the Qinhuai River.

Above the headless flowers
     killed by frost,
the moon blazons
     in the transparent sky.

Horses as Fierce As Flying Dragons

 by Brett Rutherford

     after Li Yu, Poem 33

Dreams hurt.
Last night I thought
I was back in my palace.
My feet knew every turn
and by-way. Nothing
was changed. Bronzes
and vases and carvings,
all were intact. Fresh
flowers adorned everything.

War drums were sounding.
Chariots flared out
     in every direction,
horses as fierce
     as flying dragons.

The breeze behaved.
The upright flowers
stood at full attention.

Who would have have called
the world that we knew,
too good to be true?

Tears

 by Brett Rutherford

     after Li Yu, Poem 32

So many tears! Like rivers
on the map of China,
sideways they flow
across my furrowed cheeks.

Tears cannot tell my story;
     ink can.
Tears cannot play the phoenix
     flute; breath can.

I weep, I write, I sigh.
Still this failing heart
     refuses to break.

The Land of Wine

 by Brett Rutherford

     after Li Yu, Poem 31

Wind and rain,
     more wind,
          more rain.
The curtain goes
    horizontal,
the screen
    with its dismal painting
     wobbles this way and that
     and almost tumbles.

The lamp falters.
The water-clock must be about
its business, but I hear no drips
in all this autumnal uproar.

Turning my head left,
     turning my head right,
there is no comfort:
what devil fashioned
these pillows, anyway?
Sitting or lying down,
sleep is impossible,
rest an illusion.

I shall be useless tomorrow.

Perhaps being useless
is an exile’s business.
The affairs of the world
do not require me.

I can make much ado
about dressing myself,
walk to the court
with secret agent in tow
and pretend to have
    something to say
     to one who calls himself
     my better.

And while I wait,
     in one of a dozen
     anterooms, someone
will bow and offer wine,
     a better one
than what I have here,
and after one or two cups
I shall slip away,
    forgetful of what
    my business was.

They will mock me,
but if my destiny is just
to float about haphazardly,
let me at least
be drunk on a decent
     vintage.

Separated

 by Brett Rutherford

     from Li Yu, Poem 30

No one will say
why I am not allowed
to see you. Spring broke
the day our hands last touched,
and now the Spring
is half the way to Summer.

Everything I loved
in your presence
annoys me now.
Plum blossoms fall
and pile in drifts,
blow in my face
as I brush them aside.
They are no longer
beautiful to me.

A stupid swan has come
and perched itself
on my window-sill.
What does she means
to tell me? What language
does a swan speak,
anyway? And where has it been?
Can it carry a dream to me
of you and our time together?

Here we came, a pair of exiles,
and now, from one another
exiled again, and to what end?

Remember the games we played,
the contests among the poets?
Now, if one came up and asked me,
“What is the sorrow of parting like?”

I know how to answer: 

It is the one thing
both eternal and infinite.
The sorrow of parting
is like new grass in spring;
the farther you look,
the more there seems to be.

The Parasol Trees

 

by Brett Rutherford

     after Li Yu, Poem 29

People whose names I did not
even know — how I miss them!
Seldom did I ask of one
who served me: what province,
what town, what branch
of what respected family?

Alone, with no one
whose opinion I value
to ask for, no one
to command some small
and trivial favor from,
I am wordless. This one,
who keeps a safe distance
and bows, has large ears.
He is here to spy.
That one, who goes and fetches
for me, is greedy for bribes.
A grunt is their salute.
They joke with one another
in a dialect unknown to me.

I go to the grove’s west end;
my shadow follows. It is here,
in one break of the tree-line
I might stand and paint
the way the waxing moon hangs
a pendant hook. A star
it brushes in front of, shimmers —
perhaps it is a planet, a fellow
wanderer far from his own home.

Behind me, a formal courtyard
lined with parasol trees
hems autumn in, a prisoner.
Each wutong tree
     awaits its phoenix;
none come, and green
has faded to yellow.
Each leaf is wide enough
     to hold a poem,
each, in breaking away,
is a sign of parting.

Of this, I need no reminder.
I say “Return!” It says “No more.”
Hands full of these damp
and wingless birds, I try
to untangle them. Vein, stem,
and branchlet cling, clog,
and fall. Cold wind and frost
will sort them out. Dispersed,
they fall impaled on other trees.
Not one will ever see its brother
again. The trees themselves
will hoard small clumps, in niche
of bark and bole, like a mother’s
sickly and favorite children.

No use, sad colonnade
of parasol trees. No use!
We are held to the ground
by gravity, by paving stones
that hold us, root and heart.

The court spy regards me:
a madman, muttering
words incomprehensible,
stuffing his robes
with rotting, pungent leaves.
Li Yu, the lunatic!

Ninth Day of the Ninth Month

 

by Brett Rutherford

     after Li Yu, Poem 28

In autumn, the daylight hastens away.
Red leaves pile up and clog the stairs.
The ninth day of the ninth month
has come and gone — the Double Yang
Festival. Brooms sweep the houses.
Hills groan with pilgrims’ footsteps.
Joss-merchants sell money to burn.
Chrysanthemums are crushed to make
a heady liqueur for this time only.

By now, the climbing dog rose
sheds its frail petals back at home,
painting with pink my old pavilions.
While here, the still-abundant flowers,
purple and full, perfume the garden.

I am told I have no right to complain.
Smoke from the kitchens huddles low
as thin rain damps it down. Here every
dog and exile eats his fill each day.

The first arriving swans are gathering.
In pairs, they sing sad songs in unison.
They came, I am reminded, free-willed.
I sigh, and swallow hard. Thus
it will be for me, as the gray sky drops
an exile’s bitter sorrow.

Monotony

 by Brett Rutherford

     after Li Yu Poem 27

Wood against wood,
stalk against stalk,
pounding like gongs
all day, all night.

I swear, that even
when wind diminishes,
the rattling goes on.

Beneath a moon
heartless as a block of ice,
I don a coat to walk
around the courtyard.

I scan the bamboo grove
for mischief. Miscreants
are out there; no poems
come amid the clack-clack,
rick-rack of the stalks,
the flutter-flap of leaves
like birds tethered
and trying to escape.

No one is there.
No tormentors sit
with block and clapper
charged with disturbing me.

Here, Nature abhors me.
Life may be long,
but bamboo is longer.

Night Sounds

 

by Brett Rutherford

     after Li Yu, poem 26

I think they mean to torture me
with either silence, or sounds.
When my residence is empty
as I have no visitors at all,
the quiet of the courtyard
seems weirdly ominous.

It makes me hear
sounds no one wants,
such as the pounding
of laundry on cold stones.
Sometimes it is the wind,
which howls in this country
with unpleasant vowels.

Why are the nights so long?
Sleep is insufficient
to cover them.
Ears are worse than eyes
in a strange place.

Among the pines,
and worse, among
the rattling bamboo,
what creatures here
prowl nocturnally?

Sounds in the night
that enter my curtained
windows -- how many
belong to those
who watch and count
my every movement?

If I sound out a poem,
subversive and sad,
to whose ears
will they repeat it?

Meditation in Exile

 by Brett Rutherford

     adapted from Li Yu, Poem 25

I know I should go in, now.
It is best to forget it all, better to sleep
and recall it to ghost-life; least-best
is waiting out the night here,
thinking of those who have gone.

The wind is back in the courtyard —
new wind or ever the same one? —
and the dull grass is sliced
    with new green slivers.

Spring, undeniable,  paints yellow-green
     in willow shoots.
Long I recline on the balustrade,
waving away the servant, a nay
to the tonic of the waiting teacup.

I am alone. I am not among
the endless scrolls of my old poems —
gone and lost! I mouth the words
of those I can remember — others
must be my memorial called forth
to the minds of surviving friends.
My mouth seems full of stones,
my words, choked back.

                                              All ears,
I wait for for the next west-east
fluttering amid the bamboo leaves,
wind a new moon always prompts.
The breeze, at least, still chatters on.

Away, where I am missed,
and amid those I despair of,
exactly the same sky shivers.

Rubbing their hands
     together, the pi-pa players
await my orders. What tune
can I order amid the willow rush,
the ruffle of wind in the cat-tails?
I gesture them to stillness. They bow.
The think me unmusical.
The melodies they want to play
are not the ones I know.

Someone, I see, has not removed
the hundred-year-old wine jar,
nor my ink pot and its brushes.
As for calligraphy, what is mine,
drawn with a hand that shakes,
against that cracked-ice poem
that just now melts on the lake?
Once, I would have indicated that
with but one finger, and someone
would have rushed to draw it.

On the deep, dark terrace behind me
a single candle burns, one ember
beside it, incense out of breath.

The past.   The past.   The dawn
that I am facing is solitary;
there seems scant need to undress
but to rise and re-dress again,
for whom,  or for what?

One palace is like
another palace; the same earth
turns below home and exile.
Here, there is the pretense
     of status and honor.
Who am I to complain?
I could well write
another thousand poems.

I feel in my hair the gnawing frost,
as on my brow the last snow
hovers at edge of vision
and refuses to melt.

I     will     just    sit.

But how can words come,
when thought is unthinkable?

Nightmare

by Brett Rutherford

How many faces greet you
when your grateful eyes open,
remembering the night of love?

Just one? Or, one,
and the one who resembled her,
and is now ashes?

How many feet
peep out beneath the blankets?
Pray to the gods it is not six!

[written as an interlude for the Li Yu poem-cycle]

Long Is the Sadness

 by Brett Rutherford

    after Li Yu, Poem 24

Weep, China!
     The girl who played the flute
     among the trees, and charmed
     an Emperor, is gone.
The Spring light comes seeking her
     in the royal garden,
clouds of sweet pollen, and petals
     of gold, cascade in waves,
seeking her out, and finding
     only a funeral.
Winds from the East
     that lifted me once
     now make me stoop,
unbearable now the fragrance
     it carries.

I watch the moon pass
the cut and curve of the jade window;
     waning, diminished, sliced.

Will I come to see the days
     of my misery outnumbering
the days I was allotted joy?
(Who should live so long?)

Beyond the balcony a willow
     droops with its own weight
     of leaf and branch to water,
expecting to find a companion —
hopes dashed, it only sees
     itself reflected. No wonder
we say the splendid tree weeps.

Dressed in mourning,
     one scarcely has time for love.
Each time I meet
    the one who waits for me,
it is a short as a dream.
     Haste wounds us.

We part. I am sure
there are certain words she hopes for
that I am not prepared to say,
not with so fresh a ghost
listening.

 

 

The Futile Bouquet

 by Brett Rutherford

    after Li Yu, Poem 23 

There is a forest flower
I love, found only
one week of the Spring
in just one shady wooded spot.

I go with poets there,
and painters, and each of us
attempt to catch
    that flower’s essence.

Today my servants
have brought me some:
ripped from their soil,
poor droopy things
they are, the red
already gone to orange,
the petals withering,
stalks oozing milky white.

Kidnapped flowers,
what ransom can I give,
what favor confer
on the violated forest?

A wine I know
has the same vermilion hue.
Tears of the grape? My tears
that ought to be my blood?

Send wine! Call in
some poets to console me.
Find some drear song
to fiddle me to sleep.

Life is now a misery.
Onward it carries me
eastward against my will
with the relentless floods.