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.

 

Doubts

 by Brett Rutherford

     after Li Yu, Poem 22

As everything fades,
     the cherry flowers
     are not what they were;
limp, they fall,
     fallen, they rot.

Spring is not
     what it used to be
when you loved me
     better.

They have clouded my mind
     with idle gossip;
yours, with doubt and regret.
Harming no one,
     we now harm all.

I passed beneath the gate
onto the covered porch.
The night had ended.
From here I watched
the moon slant down
upon the withered branches.

The hut was still.
No pale lamp fluttered.
I waited for you
until the dawning light
made it impossible to stay.

That night I waited,
watched, and did not enter,
you had arrived before me
and fell into
a contented sleep.

I went my way,
     turned back,
and saw you going
    the other.

I think of it now.
I never told you.

 

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. "

War Story

by Brett Rutherford

Warned not to pay mind

to the old man

in the wheelchair

when his eyes went funny,

I listened anyway.

"Hungry?" he said.

"I'm never hungry

the way I was

when we got lost

on the Eastern Front.

"Russians swept in,

we, after. We chewed

on roots and leaves

as we hid in the forest.

We watched a house,

a one-room hovel,

as puffs of smoke

went up, then died.

"Gunshots we heard

in the dark,

and when we looked

at sunrise, the door

to the place was open.

Two bodies lay side

by side in the dirt.

"We waited. We waited.

So famished we almost

crawled, at last we dared

go to the farmhouse.

"That smell. A pot —

steam rose from it

when we lifted the lid.

'Soup,' I shouted,

'My God! It's soup!

Cabbage and potatoes,

onions and meat!'

"I put the ladle in.

I lifted up.

It was a human foot

at the bottom.

"Young man:

we ate it anyway."

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)