Chill River (1) Meng Jiao The hazy rains are cleared by frost, The cold creek shows its thready fish, By luck I find some mirrored sky And look into my shrivelled self. Nothing hides the scree below, The riverbed is crystal bright As motives in an honest man— And yet it can be treacherous: I’ve learned its vulgar, shallow heart May freeze at night, but they ford at dawn. So when I scoop bright jade to wash, To cleanse myself of dust and doubts, I find this trafficked, muddy stream Cannot compare to a mountain spring. Chill River (2) Meng Jiao In Luoyang there’s a street and stream, A riverbank beside my house, Where boats would break the bright white ice And made it chime like resonant jade. Green water froze to emeralds, And spume became a diamond white, This jewelled mirror shone and showed All earthly things as levelled out. The bank was steep, I zigzagged down, A dead tree sprouted widow’s tears; I smelled their frosty fragrance fade As the frozen scene breathed gentle haze; I sat, entranced, and listened and gazed, Then rushed away, and lost my way. In banks of thorns I hacked and called, My words were full of dark despair. Chill River (3) Meng Jiao At dawn I drank a cup of wine, Then walked on snow across the creek. The waves had frozen into knives That slit the flesh of ducks and doves: Their nesting feathers were strewn about; Their blood and cries had sunk in silt. I stood, unsure what I might say, And intoned my moans without sound. This frozen blood can’t start the spring— There’ll be no balance in its life. Cold blood can’t be the mulch for flowers— They’ll well up just like widow’s tears! Dead from cold, too frozen to farm, How dark this brambled village is. Chill River (4) Meng Jiao Their poles crack galaxies of jade, Leave swarms of firefly ice behind. The northern freeze froze deep, they moan, And hungrily howl when their hunt finds Carrion corpses of sunken fish. Teeth of ice grind and gnash, The sound of wind sours the bells; There’s no escape from its clear despair, It’s washed the detail from what we hear, And ended lapping emerald waves, So pretty pairs flap helplessly. They cannot step; their feet will slip. They cannot stop; a twig will snap. A hoot! A yelp! A yowl for help They raise their heads and pray for peace. 孟郊 寒溪·其一 霜洗水色尽,寒溪见纤鳞。 幸临虚空镜,照此残悴身。 潜滑不自隐,露底莹更新。 豁如君子怀,曾是危陷人。 始明浅俗心,夜结朝已津。 净漱一掬碧,远消千虑尘。 始知泥步泉,莫与山源邻。 孟郊 寒溪·其二 洛阳岸边道,孟氏庄前溪。 舟行素冰折,声作青瑶嘶。 绿水结绿玉,白波生白珪。 明明宝镜中,物物天照齐。 仄步下危曲,攀枯闻孀啼。 霜芬稍消歇,凝景微茫齐。 痴坐直视听,戆行失踪蹊。 岸重劚棘劳,语言多悲凄。 孟郊 寒溪·其三 晓饮一杯酒,踏雪过清溪。 波澜冻为刀,剸割凫与鹥。 宿羽皆翦弃,血声沉沙泥。 独立欲何语,默念心酸嘶。 冻血莫作春,作春生不齐。 冻血莫作花,作花发孀啼。 幽幽棘针村,冻死难耕犁 孟郊 寒溪·其四 篙工磓玉星,一路随迸萤。 朔冻哀彻底,獠馋咏潜鯹。 冰齿相磨啮,风音酸铎铃。 清悲不可逃,洗出纤悉听。 碧潋卷已尽,彩双飞飘零。 下蹑滑不定,上栖折难停。 哮嘐呷喢冤,仰诉何时宁。
After finding new resources (translations and discussion by Stephen Owen and David McCraw), I’ve had to revise my translations. The amount of disagreement over what these poems mean remains high, and I still don’t think any interpretation makes full sense. In a number of places, it’s not even known for certain what the Chinese text is supposed to be. But we have to s, but this is what I’ve got so far.
Meng is bouncing back and forth between the beauty of the winter and the savagery of the winter. He starts by noting that the apparent clarity of the winter stream is not as positive as it might be. When he goes down to look in the bright mirror, he gets lost in thorns. Then he notices that the winter is hurting the animals just as much as people. In poem 4, the animals begin to cry out for help, and in the second half of the series he’s going to try to act as an advocate for the animals.
This is powerful poetry by Meng Jiao.
I doubt this guy was the Tang Bukowski, but he seems to have laid waste to the poetic sensibility of the times the same way that Buk did in his day. Yeah, he must’ve been hated.
Again, thank you for doing this work. It is so rewarding to read the poems with your commentary and get an inside look at the process of translating
these wonderful aged yet timeless poems.
I have many translations by various authors, but I find that when I’m opening up a book, I tend to read a number of poems and they kind of blur together.
I enjoy the way your approach makes me focus on one poem or a few poems at a time.
I wish I had a good resource to understand the Chinese characters, but I don’t even know how many exist. (Chinese characters)
But reading your translations and commentary of Meng Jiao and the others gives me a better understanding of the complexity of the Chinese originals and the challenge of turning them into poems in English. Choices in diction must be maddening.
As you’ve probably surmised, I’m not an academic or a scholar, just a fan of Poetry, and I hope you don’t mind my commenting on your work.
Some of the English word choices in the first poem give me pause: thready, scree, ford, and this disagreement, “ I’ve learned its vulgar, shallow heart
May freeze at night, but they ford at dawn.”
He’s talking about the freeze at night and the thaw and free flow in the warmer morning, I suppose. Or the difference between night and day.
It must be a struggle to translate the poem accurately in historical context yet make it work well as poetry in English. And I suppose that is why so many liberties have been taken with translations of Chinese poetry.
The trade-off of tradition, period form, syntax, allusion, diction, with the poems exquisite emotional and imagistic impact is a trade worth considering.
As I prefer reading poetry, rather than listening to it, I’d trade the traditions and forms for the powerful impact of what the poets have to say.
It’s all good, the more the merrier.
Thanks for putting this out there in the ether.