Cen Shen

Look how swift to the snowy sea races Running-Horse River! --

And sand, up from the desert, flies yellow into heaven.

This Ninth-month night is blowing cold at Wheel Tower,

And valleys, like peck measures, fill with the broken boulders

That downward, headlong, follow the wind.

...In spite of grey grasses, Tartar horses are plump;

West of the Hill of Gold, smoke and dust gather.

O General of the Chinese troops, start your campaign!

Keep your iron armour on all night long,

Send your soldiers forward with a clattering of weapons!

...While the sharp wind's point cuts the face like a knife,

And snowy sweat steams on the horses' backs,

Freezing a pattern of five-flower coins,

Your challenge from camp, from an inkstand of ice,

Has chilled the barbarian chieftain's heart.

You will have no more need of an actual battle! --

We await the news of victory, here at the western pass!

-- Poem translator: Kiang Kanghu

The greybeard, seventy, still deals in wine;

A thousand jars, a hundred urns, at Huamen’s gate in line.

The roadside elm seeds look like cash, you know;

If I pick them to buy your drink, will you let them go?

Westward I ride, as if to the sky I'd go;

Two full moons seen since I left home below.

Where to lodge tonight? No place in sight —

But boundless sand, no soul in the dying light.

The crescent moon rises and hangs on city wall;

The rising moon on city wall shines over all.

There're a thousand homes in seven districts on frontier;

Half of the Tartars play pipa for us to hear.

The heart would be broken to hear the pipa song,

When the wind sheds leaves in showers and night is long.

West of the River I have so many compeers;

Many friends are separated from me for many years.

Before the flowery gate we see autumn grass.

Could we bear to see friends grow old like it? Alas!

How many times can we laugh in a life so fleet?

So let us drink our fill till drunken, now we meet!

I may exert myself to climb a mountain or hill,

But there's no one to supply me with wine.

I sorrow for the chrysanthemums in my own garden:

They must be blooming, but with the grim battlefield nearby.

The pagoda, rising abruptly from earth,

Reaches to the very Palace of Heaven....

Climbing, we seem to have left the world behind us,

With the steps we look down on hung from space.

It overtops a holy land

And can only have been built by toil of the spirit.

Its four sides darken the bright sun,

Its seven stories cut the grey clouds;

Birds fly down beyond our sight,

And the rapid wind below our hearing;

Mountain-ranges, toward the east,

Appear to be curving and flowing like rivers;

Far green locust-trees line broad roads

Toward clustered palaces and mansions;

Colours of autumn, out of the west,

Enter advancing through the city;

And northward there lie, in five graveyards,

Calm forever under dewy green grass,

Those who know life's final meaning

Which all humankind must learn.

...Henceforth I put my official hat aside.

To find the Eternal Way is the only happiness.

-- Poem translator: Kiang Kanghu

It's a long way home, a long way east.

I am old and my sleeve is wet with tears.

We meet on horseback. I have no means of writing.

Tell them three words: "He is safe."

   -- Poem translator: Kiang Kanghu

Cock-crow, the Purple Road cold in the dawn;

Linnet songs, court roofs tinted with April;

At the Golden Gate morning bell, countless doors open,

And up the jade steps float a thousand officials

With flowery scabbards.... Stars have gone down;

Willows are brushing the dew from the flags --

And, alone on the Lake of the Phoenix, a guest

Is chanting too well The Song of Bright Spring.

-- Poem translator: Kiang Kanghu

Together we officials climbed vermilion steps,

To be parted by the purple walls....

Our procession, which entered the palace at dawn,

Leaves fragrant now at dusk with imperial incense.

...Grey heads may grieve for a fallen flower,

Or blue clouds envy a lilting bird;

But this reign is of heaven, nothing goes wrong,

There have been almost no petitions.

-- Poem translator: Kiang Kanghu

The north wind rolls the white grasses and breaks them;

And the Eighth-month snow across the Tartar sky

Is like a spring gale, come up in the night,

Blowing open the petals of ten thousand peartrees.

It enters the pearl blinds, it wets the silk curtains;

A fur coat feels cold, a cotton mat flimsy;

Bows become rigid, can hardly be drawn

And the metal of armour congeals on the men;

The sand-sea deepens with fathomless ice,

And darkness masses its endless clouds;

But we drink to our guest bound home from camp,

And play him barbarian lutes, guitars, harps;

Till at dusk, when the drifts are crushing our tents

And our frozen red flags cannot flutter in the wind,

We watch him through Wheel-Tower Gate going eastward.

Into the snow-mounds of Heaven-Peak Road....

And then he disappears at the turn of the pass,

Leaving behind him only hoof-prints.

-- Poem translator: Kiang Kanghu

On Wheel Tower parapets night-bugles are blowing,

Though the flag at the northern end hangs limp.

Scouts, in the darkness, are passing Quli,

Where, west of the Hill of Gold, the Tartar chieftain has halted

We can see, from the look-out, the dust and black smoke

Where Chinese troops are camping, north of Wheel Tower.

...Our flags now beckon the General farther west-

With bugles in the dawn he rouses his Grand Army;

Drums like a tempest pound on four sides

And the Yin Mountains shake with the shouts of ten thousand;

Clouds and the war-wind whirl up in a point

Over fields where grass-roots will tighten around white bones;

In the Dagger River mist, through a biting wind,

Horseshoes, at the Sand Mouth line, break on icy boulders.

...Our General endures every pain, every hardship,

Commanded to settle the dust along the border.

We have read, in the Green Books, tales of old days-

But here we behold a living man, mightier than the dead.

-- Poem translator: Kiang Kanghu