Highly recommended to anyone interested in Chinese traditional poetry and culture, and the way it is received in China today. I looked at an aspect of Michael Wood’s In the Footsteps of Du Fu: China’s Greatest Poet (1) in my last post (2). This is a full book review. The back cover provides an accurate basic summary of its contents: “For a thousand years Du Fu (712-70 CE) has been China’s most loved poet. Born into the golden age of the Tang Dynasty, he saw his world collapse in famine, war and chaos. The poet and his family became impoverished refugees, but his profound vision and his empath ..read more

“The good rain knows its season. When spring arrives it brings life. It follows the wind secretly into the night And moistens all things softly, soundlessly. On the country road the clouds are all black, On a river boat a single fire bright. At dawn you see this place red and wet: The flowers are heavy in Brocade City.” (Brocade City = Chengdu, in southwestern China) Michael Wood In The Footsteps of Du Fu: China’s Greatest Poet London: Simon and Schuster, 2023 This poem welcomes spring and also celebrates arrival at a place of safety. For a brief period in the early 760s the Chinese poet Du Fu ..read more

Cranes called through the spray of surging waters Ch’u skies were free of clouds and rain at the end of a quiet day of boating I was fishing among green rushes when petals landed on my outdoor robe a light breeze was blowing upstream as I worked my way to their unreachable source among distant trees I saw a hint of green From: In Such Hard Times: the Poetry of Wei Ying-wu Red Pine (Translator) Port Townsend, WA: Copper Canyon Press, 2009 Wei Ying-wu was a poet of the later 8th. century CE, as we count time. It was a period when the later-remembered-as-glorious T’ang dynasty had begun to unrave ..read more

“The Tao Te Ching is at heart a simple book. Written at the end of the sixth century B.C. by a man called Lao-tzu, it’s a vision of what our lives would be like if we were more like the dark new moon. “Lao-tzu teaches us that the dark can always become light and contains within itself the potential for growth and long life, while the light can only become dark and brings with it decay and early death. Lao-tzu chose long life. Thus, he chose the dark.” (1) Red Pine’s translation of the Tao Te Ching has been around in its present form since 2009, but I have come across it only recently. It has ..read more

Passion too deep seems like none. While we drink, nothing shows but the smile that will not come. The wax candles feel, suffer at partings: Their tears drip for us until the sky brightens. Tu Mu (803-52) From: Poems of the Late T’ang translated from the Chinese with an introduction by A.C. Graham Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1965 Of this poet, Graham says: “Tu Mu is most admired as the master of chueh-chu, the New Style quatrain with an AABA rhyme scheme, like that of Omar Khayyam. The swift elegance of his verses, running effortlessly within strict formal limits, cannot be captured in my ..read more

I do not know of a Druid or Pagan currently living contemplatively in a mountain cave. But I would not be surprised to learn of one, somewhere in the world. The poem below comes from the contemplative culture of ancient China, where the Taoist and Ch’an Buddhist traditions, in some ways rivals, developed in a mutually influencing way. I believe that there is something for contemplatively inclined Druids and Pagans to appreciate and learn from these traditions. I like this poem because it is a nature poem as much as a contemplative one. Even the meditative turn towards mind is embedded in its ..read more

The Way fills the entire world It is everywhere that people are But people are unable to understand this. When you are released by this one word: You reach up to the heavens above; You stretch down to the earth below; You pervade the nine inhabited regions. What does it mean to be released by it? The answer resides in the calmness of the mind. When your mind is well ordered, your sense are well ordered. When your mind is calm, your senses are calmed. What makes them well ordered is the mind; What makes them calm is the mind. By means of the mind you store the mind. Within the mind there is ye ..read more

“The Tao Te Ching is partly in prose, partly in verse; but as we define poetry now, not by rhyme and meter but as a patterned intensity of language, the whole thing is poetry. I wanted to catch that poetry, its terse, strange beauty. Most translations have caught meanings in their net, but prosily, letting the beauty slip through. And in poetry, beauty is no ornament; it is the meaning. It is the truth. We have that on good authority. “Scholarly translations of the Tao Te Ching as a manual for rulers use a vocabulary that emphasises the uniqueness of the Taoist ‘sage’, his masculinity, his aut ..read more

At dusk I came down from the mountain, The mountain moon as my companion, And looked behind at tracks I’d taken That were blue, blue beyond the skyline; You took my arm, lead me to your hut Where small children drew hawthorn curtains To green bamboos and a hidden path With vines to brush the travellers’ clothes; And I rejoiced at a place to rest And good wine, too, to pour out with you: Ballads we sang, the wind in the pines, Till our songs done, Milky Way had paled; And I was drunk and you were merry, We had gaily forgotten the world! Li Po and Tu Fu Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973 (Poems select ..read more

Above the gorges, one thread of sky; Cascades in the gorges twine a thousand cords. High up, the slant of splintered sunlight, moonlight; Beneath, curbs to the wild heave of the waves, The shock of a gleam, and then another, In depths of shadow frozen for centuries; The rays between the gorges do not halt at noon; Where the straits are perilous, more hungry spittle. Trees lock their roots in rotted coffins And the twisted skeletons hang tilted upright; Branches weep as the frost perches Mournful cadences, remote and clear. A spurned exile’s shriveled guts Scald and seethe in the water and fire ..read more