The Useless Tree

Feeling the Summer and Two by Li Po

      It's hot here, as is so much of the Eastern US just now.  The seasonal change has come in due course, building up to this rather early burst of heat.  I've had some time to adjust to the dwindling of Spring and the advance of Summer but, as always, the shift seems to come so quickly.  Some of that has to do with the tempo of human events that shape my life: the end of the academic year, graduation, the passing of my daughter's school year.   Those moments define the natural change for me as much as the temperature.  But Nature (Way) still has its way, pushing, as it has done this week, its heat and storms to the forefront, letting us know that we do not really control or manage the change of seasons.

     So, I went looking for a poem to capture the summer heat.  My volume of selections from Li Po (Li Bai) has more spring and autumn verses than summer stanzas.  But I found some that get at change in general.

Facing Wine

Never refuse wine.  I'm telling you,
people come smiling in spring winds:

peach and plum like old friends, their
open blossoms scattering toward me,

singing orioles in jade-green trees,
and moonlight probing gold winejars.

Yesterday we were flush with youth,
and today, white hair's an onslaught.

Bramble's overgrown Shih-hu Temple,
and deer roam Ku-su Terrace ruins:

it's always been like this, yellow dust
choking even imperial gates closed

in the end.  If you don't drink wine,
where are those ancient people now?

     And how could I not read Li Po on Chuang Tzu:

Ancient Song

Chuang-tzu dreams he's a butterfly,
and a butterfly become Chuang-tzu.

All transformation this one body,
boundless occurrence goes on and on:

it's no surprise eastern seas become
western streams shallow and clear,

or the melon-grower at Ch'ing Gate
once reigned as Duke of Tung-ling.

Are hopes and dreams any different?
We bustle around, looking for what?

      There's a line that gets at the onrush of summer: "boundless occurrence goes on and on."  That's what's happening in my backyard.

In Sympathy for the people of Sichuan

     It is difficult to respond to a terrible tragedy on the scale of what is unfolding in Sichuan.  Unlike Burma, there is no hard political edge here, just awful human suffering.  So, I turn to Tu Fu (Du Fu), the poet.  In a volume of some of his poems that I keep on my desk there is a section titled "Chengdu," consisting of verses written when he lived in and around that city.  Since Chengdu is near the center of the current disaster, I thought a poem from there might be appropriate today.  There is sadness in many of Tu Fu's poems, but I tried to find one that had a bit of uplift to it, something to focus our attention on survival and appreciation for small things:

Morning Rain

Sounding cold dawn skies, steady winds
Tatter visions of cloud over the river.
Ducks take refuge along the island.  Among
Thickets, swallows find shelter from rain.

Huang and Ch'i both refused an emperor,
Ch'ao and Yu an empire.  A cup of wine,
A thatched home - that I am here as today's
Flawless morning passes gathers me in joy.

    Let's hope that the people of Sichuan will soon find joy again in another morning.

Du Fu (Tu Fu) and Li Bai (Li Po) Talk to Each Other

At Sky's-End Thinking of Li Po
by Tu Fu

In these last outskirts of sky, cold
Winds rise.  What are you thinking?
Will geese ever arrive, now autumn
Waters swamp rivers and lakes there?

Art resents life fulfilled, and goblins
Dine on mountain travelers with glee:
Why not sink poems to that ill-used
Ghost in teh Mi-lo, talk things over?

Teasing Tu Fu
by Li Po

Here on the summit of Fan-k'o Mountain, it's Tu Fu
under a midday sun sporting his huge farmer's hat.

How is it you've gotten so thin since we parted?
Must be all those poems you've been suffering over.

Li Po (Li Bai) on Chuang Tzu

Ancient Song

Chuang-tzu dreams he's a butterfly,
and a butterfly becomes Chuang-tzu.

All transformation this one body,
boundless occurrence goes on and on:

it's no surprise eastern seas become
western streams shallow and clear,

or the melon-grower at Ch'ing Gate
once reigned as Duke of Tung-ling.

Are hopes and  dreams any different?   
We bustle around, looking for what?

Tao Poem

      A reader sends in this poem, by Charles Wright, heard on this morning's Writer's Almanac, on NPR:

After Reading T'ao Ch'ing, I wander Untethered Through the Short Grass

Dry spring, no rain for five weeks.
Already the lush green begins to bow its head and sink to its
         knees.

Already the plucked stalks and thyroid weeds like insects
Fly up and trouble my line of sight.

I stand inside the word here
         As that word stands in its sentence,
Unshadowy, half at ease.

Religion's been in a ruin for over a thousand years.
Why shouldn't the sky be tatters,
         lost notes to forgotten songs?

I inhabit who I am, as T'ao Ch'ing says, and walk about
Under the mindless clouds.
         When it ends, it ends. What else?

One morning I'll leave home and never find my way back—
My story and I will disappear together, just like this.

 

A Favorite, Though Sad, Tu Fu Poem

The Lone Goose

Never eating or drinking, the lone goose
Flies - thinking of its flock, calling out.
Who pities a flake of shadow lost beyond
Ten-thousand clouds?  It stares far-off,

As if glimpses of them remained.  Sorrows
Mount - it almost hears them again....
Wild crows, not a thread of thought anywhere,
Squawk and shriek, fighting each other off.

Li Po on Way

     Looking For Yung, The Recluse Master

Emerald peaks polish heaven.  I wander,
sweeping clouds away, forgetting years,

looking for the ancient Way.  Resting
against a tree, I listen to streamwater,

black ox dozing among warm blossoms,
white crane asleep in towering pines.

A voice calls through river-tinted dusk,
but I've descended into cool mist alone.

A Little Tu Fu

     Here's an anti-war lament by Tu Fu to think about:

Moonlit Night Thinking of My Brothers

Warning drums have ended all travel.
A lone goose cries across autumn
Borderlands.  White Dew begins tonight,
This bright moon bright there, over

My old village.  My scattered brothers -
And no home to ask "Are they alive or dead?"
Letters never arrive.  War comes
And goes - then comes like this again.

     I imagine many Iraqis with precisely these thoughts...

Tu Fu and Aidan

     I'm out of town today, down in the big city.  Here's a poem I found by Tu Fu that touched my heart:

Thinking of my Little Boy

Apart still, and already the oriole songs
Fill warm spring days.  Changing seasons
Startle me here without you, my little
Sage.  Who talks philosophy with you now?

Clear streams, empty mountain paths, our
Simple village home among ancient trees...
In grief thinking of you, sleep: sunning
On the veranda, I nod off beneath blue skies.

A little Li Po

    I have been working through various papers and blogs all day but can find nothing to write about.  Too much tragedy: the bombings in Mumbai; the tunnel collapse in Boston; the various wars.  Perhaps it is the summer heat that has sapped my critical focus this evening.  I could hold forth on issues of state, but it is just not in me tonight.

    Instead, I turn to Li Po, the great Chinese poet.  Thumbing through Hinton's selections, I find one that catches my fancy.  I am alone just now - Maureen and Maggie are out at a movie - and, even though I am not drinking wine, and the moon has not yet put in an appearance (though it was beautiful last night and will likely be so again tonight), let me offer the second section of a three-part Li Po piece, "Drinking Alone Beneath the Moon:"

Surely, if heaven didn't love wine,
there would be no Wine Star in heaven,

and if earth didn't love wine, surely
there would be no Wine Spring on earth.

Heaven and earth have always loved wine,
so how could loving wine shame heaven?

I hear clear wine called enlightenment,
and they say murky wine is like wisdom:

once you drink enlightenment and wisdom,
why go searching for god and immortals?

Three cups and I've plumbed the great Way,
a jarful and I've merged with occurrence

appearing of itself.  Wine's view is lived:
you can't preach doctrine to the sober.