Casually blending death in with sex

A war widow in Ukraine. Image: Laurence Geai/MYOP for Le Monde

Jade Pavilion Songs (4)
Quan Deyu

I heard you’ll fight
    Korean wars,
        It gives me fear,
            That eastern land.
Fear’s cracked my face,
    Left me ashamed,
        Your baby begs:
            Please understand.

权德舆  玉台体十二首·其四
知向辽东去，由来几许愁。
破颜君莫怪，娇小不禁羞。

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The northeast of modern China, adjoining modern Korea, was one of the fronts on which fighting periodically flared up. Korea itself was a sometime-tributary of the Tang Empire, but every now and then it would revolt and battle against the Tang. Meanwhile the northern plains of Manchuria were home to nomadic peoples who might launch wars against settled China at any time.

This poem is in the voice of a young wife left behind as her husband travels to fight on the eastern border. It’s a combination of real anguish and coquettish language that sits uneasily together to my ear, but was very common in Tang poems. I wonder if the fact that life was much more precarious in Tang times meant that writers were more comfortable closely juxtaposing death with other themes?