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]