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Morton Marcus: Good evening everybody, this is Mort Marcus and this is the Poetry Show. And as you can probably tell from the music behind me, tonight's show, hastily thrown together, is a program on Chinese poetry to lament, to honor the

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situation going on in mainland China, a situation which has thrown me into much thought, perplexity, and grief because I was to be a sinologist when I was a young man, and through various situations, that did not occur. But one of the many

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things that I think about is the fact that this is one of the great civilizations of the world which has given us many inventions, and certainly and not least, some of the greatest art that has been produced, pictorial art of all kinds:

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great paintings, great bronze work, many, many different crafts and arts. And certainly one of the greatest of the contributions of China to the world is its poetry. And so tonight, I would like to read Chinese poetry to you just

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randomly going through a series of translations that I've done in the past twenty odd years, and different translations by different translators that I've seen, I've selected for this program. And I hope you will bear with me because this

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program was very, very hastily thrown together. The program on James Joyce which was supposed to be at this time, celebrating Bloomsday, will be next week, and much more apropos because Bloomsday is on the 16th of June and we will talk about that next

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time. One of the many interesting things that it seems to me is going on in China is that you have so much Chinese history to deal with that you can see parallels, you can see

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repetitions going on there. And yet, in many, many ways, this is totally new. I think one of the most sorrowful things about this entire episode is that it could have been avoided as so much- so many of us, I'm sure, realized. But that in the killing of

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students, you really in many ways kill your future, and China, which was about to come into the world and become part of the world, now finds itself in a grievous situation which may wind up in civil war. It is also interesting that the 27th

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army that did, as we now know, almost all the killing over the weekend, is a Mongolian Army. That is it is part of the People's Republic that actually takes for its soldiers Mongolian nationals, and I couldn't help thinking that it is again a

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situation where Mongols have come into China, as Genghis Khan had done and as Kublai Khan had done, and once more, perpetrated great grief on the Chinese people. Just thoughts like that, curiosities, led me back to reading the great works of

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Chinese poetry, and I just want to share some of these with you. The first thing I will read from is from the great Chinese religious book, which is really a form of poetry, and contains eighty-one poems, eighty-one short poems, and it is called,

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"The Lao Tzu," in honor of the supposed author, or its other name is, "The Tao Te Ching," or the way of knowledge. And it is the first text of Taoism and yet its the beauty and wonder of its originality and phrasing make it something beautiful to behold.

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Let me read you number eleven and let me have you think on that. I should tell you that there are two major schools of thought and attitude, if you will, in China: One is Confucianism and the other is Taoism. And Confucianism, as you

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know, concerns itself with man in the social and political world, how he deports himself and how women deport themselves, obviously also, in the- the social web or scheme of things. But the Tao Te Ching really deals with man as a metaphysical

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being, as a spiritual being, and shuns society, and tells man to leave society, leave the political venue, and go off into nature, and find the way that is revealed, the Tao, that is revealed in nature, which is the true way that man should deport

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himself, in harmony with nature. And it is a wonderful little book. There are many, many different translations of this book and they're getting better and better. This is: NUMBER ELEVEN of the eighty-one poems:

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Thirty spokes converge upon a single hub, it is on the hole in the center that the use of the wheel is felt. We make a vessel from a lump of clay, it is the empty space within the vessel that makes the vessel useful. We make doors and windows for a

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room but it is the empty spaces that make the room livable. Thus, while the tangible has advantages, it is the intangible that makes it useful. Here's NUMBER TWELVE:

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The five colors blind the eye, the five tones deafen the ear, the five flavors cloy the palate, racing and hunting madden the mind, rare goods tempt men to do wrong. Therefore, the sage takes care of the belly, not the eye. He

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prefers what is within to what is without. Here's another one, HESITANT, this is number fifteen: The ancient adepts of the Tao were subtle, inflexible, profound, and comprehensive. Their minds were too deep to be

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fathomed. Because they are unfathomable, one can only describe them vaguely by their appearance. Hesitant like one waiting in a stream, timid like one afraid of his neighbors on all sides, cautious and courteous like a guest, yielding

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like ice on the point of melting, simple, like an uncarved block, hollow like a cave, confused like a muddy pool, and yet, who else could quietly and gradually evolve from the muddy to the clear? Who else could slowly but steadily

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move from the inert to the living? He who keeps the Tao does not want to be full but precisely because he is never full, he can always remain like a hidden sprout and does not rush to early ripening.

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And here is NUMBER FORTY-ONE: When a wise scholar hears the Tao, he practices it diligently. When a mediocre scholar hears the Tao, he wavers between belief and unbelief. When a worthless scholar hears the Tao,

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he laughs boisterously at it, but if such a one does not laugh at it, the Tao would not be the Tao. The wise men of old have truly said, the bright way looks dim, the progressive way looks retrograde, the smooth way looks rugged, high virtue looks like

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an abyss, great whiteness looks spotted, abundant virtue looks deficient, established virtue looks shabby, solid virtue looks as though melted. Great squareness has no corners, great talents ripen late, great sound is silent, great form is

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shapeless. The Tao is hidden and nameless, yet it alone knows how to render help and to fulfill. And many little things that you see, am I going to find this one now? And I probably am not. Well, let me get another

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translation of this. This is not as accurate but it reads with tremendous power such as: This is NUMBER TWO: People through finding something beautiful think something else

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unbeautiful, through finding one man fit, judge another unfit. Life and death, though stemming from each other, seem to conflict the stages of change, difficult and easiest phases of achievement, long and short as measures of contrast, high and

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low as degrees of relation. But since the varying tone of tones gives music to a voice, and what is, is the was of what shall be, the sanest man sets up no deed, lays down no law, takes everything that happens as it comes, as something animate, not

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to appropriate, to earn, not to own, to accept naturally without self-importance. If you never assume importance, you never lose it. I've been reading from the, "Tao Te Ching," or the, "Lao Tzu,"

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and the last translation I read is by Witter Bynner, which is very musical but is not accurate. And I would suggest you go to the Columbia "Sourcebook of Chinese Civilization," and one third of the "Tao Te Ching" is in there

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by [unidentified], and it is very accurate and it's very wonderful. But there are a lot of other, "Tao Te Ching," that you can look into in various of the bookstores in town and certainly the spiritual and occult bookstores in town, they

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have many translations of it. Well, let me read you a few of the poems because if we read some of Lao Tzu, we should get onto Confucius. I should say that there is an old simple saw in Chinese studies that says, when times are good - and that

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is not only politically good times, but times when the Yellow River is not overflowing, when there's not weather which is disastrous to the population - when times are good, then the people follow the way of Confucius and are concerned with

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family, with correct behavior to one's family, to the officials, the correct way of acting in society. But when times become bad, as we may be seeing now, then the Chinese turn to Taoism. It gives them a quietude, it gives them a way of dealing with

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bad times by, if I can put it in so mundane a term, by allowing them to look at the big picture. And so therefore let us, since we just had some Taoism, go to Confucius, and though I did not bring any of, "The Analects,"

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with me, and if you are interested in Confucius sayings there's a book called, "The Analects of Confucius," A-N-A-L-E-C-T-S, and, "The Analects," well, maybe I do have some of them here. The Analects-" no, I don't. "The

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Analects," are really the dialogues or the collected sayings of Confucius that, not his immediate students but two generations after he died, the students of his students collected, and that is the work of the words of Confucius that

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we usually study his ideas from. But he was also known as having edited the great first book of Chinese poetry called, "The Book of Songs," or, "The Book of the Great Odes." And let me just read you several of these poems because they are really

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absolutely lovely, and I think that you will enjoy them quite a bit. They are almost like little folk songs in part, the parts that usually are translated and they are about insects, small animals, lovers, etc. So let me just read some of these to you.

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PEACH TREE, YOUNG AND FRESH Peach tree, young and fresh, bright, bright it's blossoms. This girl's getting married, she'll do well in her home. Peach tree, young and fresh, plumper its fruits. This girl is

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getting married, she'll do well in her rooms. Peach tree, young and fresh, its leaves lush and full, this girl's getting married, she'll do right by her people. This is called:

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GRASSHOPPER WINGS Grasshopper wings, swarms and swarms of them, right that your sons and grandsons should prosper and thrive. Grasshopper wings, files and files of them, right that your sons and

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grandsons should carry on the line. Grasshopper wings, droves and droves of them, write that your sons and grandsons should make up a throng. And that is talking about the Chinese belief that grasshoppers

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bring good luck, so these grasshoppers will bring luck for the next generation and a birth that's just happened. Here's: THE BROAD AND SPREADING SWEET PEAR That broad and spreading sweet pear tree, don't cut it, don't

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hack it, Lord Shao camped there. That broad and spreading sweet pear tree, don't hack it, don't harm it, Lord Shao stopped there. That broad and spreading sweet pear, don't hack it, don't fell it, Lord Shao rested there.

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And as you can tell from these, they are songs and they are collected songs. These are the lyrics of the songs themselves. Here's another love poem, it's called: THAT CYPRESS BOAT IS DRIFTING

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That cypress boat is drifting, drifting with the flow: fretful, fretful, I cannot sleep, as if from a painful grief, though I have no lack of wine to ease and amuse me. My heart is not a mirror, you can't just peer into it! I too have brothers, though

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not the kind to rely on. I go to them with pleas only to meet their anger. My heart is not a stone, you can't tumble it around. My heart is not a mat, you can't just roll it up. My conduct was pure and proper, you cannot fault me there. My

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grieving heart pains and sorrows, I'm hated by those petty people. Trouble, I've seen plenty, suffered insults, not a few. Silently I brood on it, awake, beating my breast. You sun, you moon, why do you take turns hiding? Sorrow around my

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heart like an unwashed robe, silently, I brood on it, helpless to rise and fly away. SEE THE RAT See the rat? At least he's got a hide, but a man with no

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anners, a man with no manners, hy doesn't he just die? See the at? At least he's got teeth, ut a man with no decorum, a man ith no decorum, what's keeping im? Why doesn't he die? See the at? At least it's got legs, but man without courtesy, a man

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ithout courtesy, why doesn't he urry up and die? And you can see that how important that little poem and many others would be to promote getting what we have come to call the Confucian code of behavior, or the Importance of

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Li, and Li means courtesy, but what it really means when you get into the Chinese, is the outer behavior or the outer action that reflects the inner being. So, if you have good manners, if you have- if you are responsible, and you have good

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behavior, then what you're really showing is the fact that you are good inside. So, Confucianism really is not just an empty set of actions that just are superficial and material, they are much deeper than that. Well, there are a lot

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of long poems that I can't read you and that I won't. The next poet I will read you is Tao Yuanming, who is also called Tao Qian, and he lived from 365 AD to 427 AD. The songs, though collected by Confucius in around 400 BC, are actually songs that

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probably were written anywhere between 2000 and 1500 or 2000 and 1000 BC and which were sung by the people. But let us get into Tao Yuanming or Tao Qian, who is known for several things. He retired into his house, which was actually

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his small farm in the country, where he was known for growing chrysanthemums. He is the great chrysanthemum poet. And he is also known for the absolute simplicity of his poetry, though it is in various classical meters, it still is very, very

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simple. Let me just read some of these to you. Here is "Blaming Sons," and he loved wine, he wrote twelve great poems on wine, a series of poems on wine. Here is a poem in the form of a coffin puller's song, NUMBER

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ONE, and it really is a wonderful little monologue by a coffin puller or a person who has actually died. What has life must have a death. An early end doesn't mean the lifespan's been shortened. Last evening, I was the same as other

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people. This morning, I'm listed in the roster of the dead. When soul and breath scatter, where do they go? When the wasted forms consign to hollow wood? My little boy, wailing, searches for his father. My closest friends caress me and mourn. I

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know nothing now of gain or loss. How could I distinguish right from wrong? A thousand autumns, ten thousand years after, who will know if I lived in glory or disgrace? I only regret that while I was in the world, I never got to drink

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enough wine. So there is an attitude, speaking about what is going on in China now, there is an attitude that is very, very typically Chinese, typically tongue-in-cheek, and a way of

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dealing with the world around us and the difficulties of it. Let me see if I can find some of those wine poems, as I said, I put the show together very hastily and I do not- well, here's, "Moving House," which is, he wrote a lot of poems

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about moving around and- here is, "Drinking Wine." Here is the twenty poems with an introduction on drinking wine. These are some of his most famous poems. DRINKING WINE

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I live quietly with few amusements, he said, and on top of that, the nights now have grown long. I happen to have some good wine, so every evening finds me drinking. Eyeing my shadow, I drink all alone, and before I know it, I'm drunk.

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After I've gotten drunk, I proceed to compose a couple of lines of poetry for my own delight. Sheets of paper with writing on them in time make quite a pile, though there's no particular order or sequence of the poems. Now, I've asked an

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old friend to write out a clean copy of them, just so we'll have something to play with and laugh over. So, here are some of the twelve introductions- the twenty introductions to wine.

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DRINKING WINE: NUMBER ONE Prosperity and decline have no fixed dwelling, this man, that man confronts them in turn. Master Shao in his melon patch hardly the same as when he was called Tung Ling. Cold weather

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and hot have their arriving and departing, man's lot is ever the same sort of thing, enlightened people understand this point and go on their way without further doubt. Suddenly, I find I have a cask of wine. Each day at evening, I tip it with joy.

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Here's the FIFTH one: I build my hut in a place where people live and yet there's no clatter of carriage or horse. You asked me how that could be? With a mind remote, the region too grows distant. I pick with

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chrysanthemums by the eastern hedge, see the southern mountain, calm and still. The mountain air is beautiful at close of day, birds on the wing coming home together. In all this, there's some principles truth, but try to define it and

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you forget the words. And of course, that is very much like the, "Tao Te Ching," try to define it and you will forget the words, and by living in the country, by distancing himself from men Tao Qian, or Tao

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Yuanming as he's also known, did that. Notice how in these poems, chrysanthemums keep coming up again and again. Here is the: DRINKING WINE: NUMBER SEVEN Fall chrysanthemums have beautiful colors. Do still on

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them, I picked the blossoms, float them on this drowner of care, it makes me feel farther than ever from the world. Though I'm alone as I pour my wine, when the cup's empty, somehow the jar tips itself. The sun has set, all moving things stilled,

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hummingbirds hurry to the woods singing, and I whistle jauntily by the eastern eves. Another day, I get to live this life. Let's see. I did see, "Moving," but it looks like I've lost it here. Well, "Moving House," it looks like we are going not to

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find you. There it is, "Moving House: Number Two." And okay, here is: MOVING HOUSE: NUMBER ONE A long time I've wanted to live in the southern village, not

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because the houses seem so right, but I've heard there were many simple-hearted people there whose company I could enjoy every morning or evening. I thought of this for quite some years. Today, I put my plan into action. Who would demand that a

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crude hut be spacious? Enough if it keeps the rain off my bed and mat. Neighbors now and then come around, we exchange remarks, talking of times past, unusual writings we appreciate, with on another, working out th difficult passages together.

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And he says in another, "Moving House," poem, this is just the end of it: You won't find me leaving here in a hurry. A man should provide his own food and clothing. While I work the fields, I am not

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false to myself. That was Tao Yuanming, and though he lived from 365 to 427 AD, we are now going to jump up to the Tang Dynasty and read some poems by Wang Wei, who lived from- if I find his dates

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here, 699 to 761 AD and this is the great age of Chinese poetry. If we can match it with anything, we have to match it with the great age of Elizabethan poetry. However, there were more major Chinese poems, and the Tang Dynasty

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lasted longer, in the Tang Dynasty than there were in Elizabethan times. Let me read you some of Wang Wei's poems. As I said, he lived in the- most of his life, except for one year, was spent in the eighth century or the 700s and he was a great

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landscape painter. And it is interesting to see in these poems that they are usually four line end stops as they're called, just four lines long, and a very definite rhyme scheme and tone scheme, and they usually have four characters per

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line, or sixteen characters throughout the poem. And what he does is he draws landscapes in words, so let's read some of these. This is Wang Wei. BAMBOO MY LODGE

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Alone, I sit in dark bamboo, strumming the lute, whistling away, deep woods that no one knows, where a bright moon comes to shine on me. Here's:

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DUCKWEED POND, a five-character choo-choo(?). By the spring pond, deep and wide, you must be waiting for the light boat to return. Supple and soft, the green duckweed meshes till dangling willows sweep it open again.

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And here's from the first of seven poems called: JOYS OF THE COUNTRY Lush, lush, fragrant grasses and autumn green. Tall, tall towering pines and summer cold, cows and sheep come home by

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themselves to village lanes, little boys know nothing of capped and robed officials. And let me read some more. Well, maybe I won't- yes, I will, some more of Wang Wei. And here is Wang Wei uncharacteristically

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writing a longer poem. Actually, after a prose piece by Tao Yuanming who we just heard, and it is the legend of the peach garden, or the finding of this miraculous paradise, if you want, Shangri La, if you want, by a fisherman, and it has now

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been put into poetry by Wang Wei from Tao Yuanming's prose story. And it's called, again: THE PEACH GARDEN, by Wang Wei. It's probably the longest poem he ever wrote.

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The fisherman's boat is carried away along the water hugging the spring hills. By two banks, the peach blossom marks the limits of an ancient ferry. The fisherman sits gazing at the pink blossoms regardless of the distance, drifting to the end of

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a green mountain stream, careless of where he goes. A narrow passage in the mountains leads by secret detours to the beginning of an open bay. There, the hills open out on a vast expanse of flatland. He sees afar, off a place where the

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trees are massed together. He approaches it, and it is a village of one thousand homes scattered amid flowers and bamboo. The stranger begins to distinguish the speech of the Han Dynasty so long ago, those who dwell there had not changed

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the fashion of their clothes since the days of Qin. These village dwellers lived together at the source of the Wuling River. They had fled away from the world to live the lives of peasants. The moon is bright underneath the pines, shining on

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their quiet windows. The sun rises, dogs bark, and chickens crow, the inhabitants are startled to hear a man has come from the world of men, and vie with each other in hospitality. They compete to invite him into their houses and ask him where

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he has come from. When morning comes, they sweep away the fallen flowers and open the village gates. Hello again, this is Mort Marcus and tonight we're doing a special Chinese show, reading poems from the great Chinese

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poets. In mourning, and yet with the students and with the people of China, for this new sorrow that has come upon them, but at the same time joyful in the elebration of this great ulture, which certainly will ot, in any way, be destroyed by

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he tragedies that are appening. This is just another hase of China's long history. I ould like to read some poems ow by the- considered to be the wo greatest Chinese poets. I hould say there are no nnouncements tonight, I don't

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now where all the announcements ave gone, but that's fine, that llows us to do more poetry. Let e say that next week on the how, I will be doing Bloomsday, hich is June 16th and is the ay on which Ulysses depicts in ames Joyce's great 20th century

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ovel. And then at the end of he last two weeks in July and he first day of August, we will e having people from the ranslation Institute, the ational Endowment Institute t at Gabe Burns has put together h re at the University of C

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lifornia at Santa Cruz campus. A d last year, we had such great r sponse and it was so wonderful t have these translators read t e work they were doing, some o the finest translators in the E glish language here to read yo their poetry, that we decided w

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would devote three programs i stead of one to hearing their t anslations of everything from C inese, Japanese poetry, S anish poetry, medieval French p etry, even there was an Arabic t anslator of a Bedouin poet. It r ally is very exciting and you s

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ould definitely put it on your c lendars. The last two T esday's of July and then A gust 1st, which is the first T esday in August. We had read Wang Wei and I would like to read to you the two

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greatest poets of China. If we have time, I will go on to some dynasty poets, actually, maybe one or two more Tang Dynasty poets. And I would like to read you some poems by the great- If you're Chinese, you have one or two poets who you think are your

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greatest poets. And they very simply represent, in this case, what I was talking about before, which is the two aspects of the Chinese attitude towards life: one of them is Li Po, or Li Bao, as the name is pronounced now, who lived between 701 and 762,

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so you can tell it was almost an exact contemporary year for year with Wang Wei. And the other poet was Tu Fu, who lived from 712 to 770, and as you can tell was Li Bao's junior by eleven years. Now, Li Bao is, to make it very simple, the epitome of

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the free spirit, the legends that have grown about him, he held none of the positions that these other poets did in the government. He held one minor post at one time, but mostly he just wandered through the mountains, writing his poetry,

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and at one point, so the legend goes, he would take his poems and he would make little paper boats of them and sail them down the streams and rivers in the mountains. And that was the kind of free spirit, a person who was not restricted by society, who

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was not restricted by the Confucian rules of etiquette that endeared him to the Chinese people. On the other hand, their other favorite poet is Tu Fu and Tu Fu is the exact opposite of Li Bao. He is very much concerned with

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the social and political order. He is very much concerned with right conduct. He's very concerned with the sufferings of the people, and what is happening through corruption and through cruelty to the people. And so, his poems deal with life

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in the society. Now, you may think these two people disliked each other. They did not. We certainly have several poems by Tu Fu mourning the fact that he is away from Li Bao. The Chinese do not really write love poetry, by and large, their poetry is

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poetry by males, and it is poets or poems to other males, and it is about friendship and drinking wine together. They don't write romantic poetry in our terms, there are exceptions to that. However, let me read you from some of the wonderful poems by

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these two giants of Chinese poetry. If you're asking for the greatest poets in Chinese, these are the great ones. Li Bao, I'm passing one thing, THE SONG OF CHANG'AN, which Ezra Pound translated as:

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THE RIVER MERCHANT'S WIVE And he would even take on the the voice or the mask of women and write through them, and some beautiful, beautiful translations.

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While my hair was still cut straight across my forehead, I played about the front gate, pulling flowers. You came by on bamboo stilts playing horse, you walked about my seat playing with blue plums, and we went on living in the village of Chōkan:

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two small people without dislike or suspicion. At fourteen, I married My Lord you, I never laughed, being bashful. Lowering my head, I looked at the wall. Called to, a thousand times, I never looked back. At fifteen, I stopped scowling, I desired my

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dust to be mingled with yours forever, and forever, and forever. Why should I climb the lookout? At sixteen you departed, you went into far Ku-tō-en, by the river of swirling eddies, and you have been gone five months. The

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monkeys make sorrowful noise overhead. You dragged your feet when you went out. By the gate now, the moss is grown, the different mosses, too deep to clear them away. The leaves fall early this autumn, in wind. The paired butterflies are already

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yellow with August over the grass in the Western garden. They hurt me. I grow older. If you are coming down through the narrows of the river Kiang, please let me know beforehand, and I will come out to meet you as far as Chō-fū-sa.

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Or as far as the long wind sand, in translation. But he writes some really magical poems and one of my favorites and it was my favorite, I read it in around five different translations and I really didn't like it so I did one of my own. And it is called,

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"The Hard Road to Sichuan," and you people like Sichuan cooking, this is how difficult it is to get to Sichuan province when you're coming from the west, right? Going- no, you're coming from the east going west, and this is:

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THE HARD ROAD TO SICHUAN, by Li Bao, one of his greatest poems. High and hard is the road to Sichuan, higher and harder than the road to heaven. Cancong and Yufu first pierced this country and there was trade between the kingdoms. It took 48,000 years

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to penetrate the mountain barrier and even today, to the west, the Great White Mountain has only a bird's path leading up to the peak of Mount Emei. The earth crumpled, mountains split, brave men died. Others, coming after them, built a road

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of ladders with stone bridges and a connecting chain. Above is [unidentified] mountain, where six dragons circle the sun. Below is the twisting river with lashing waves and swirling eddies. Even the yellow cranes find it difficult to fly this

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high and the gibbons clutch themselves in obvious distress as they climb. How the road on the Chimney Range circles and twists, making nine switchbacks on the peak for every one hundred steps. Panting, we brush Orion, pass by the Well Star,

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grasp our hearts and sink to the ground with a groan. Will we ever return from this westward journey? The dangerous paths and abrupt cliffs are difficult to climb. Only screaming birds are around us in an ancient forest, the males fluttering after the

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females as they circle the trees. Cuckoo's wail at the moon from the steep ravines, high and hard is the road to Sichuan, higher and harder than the road to heaven. Just hearing of the journey turns the cheek pale, peak after peak touch the sky

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with hardly a foot between them. Toppled pine trees hang head down from the steepest cliffs, plunging cataracts and foaming rapids outroar each other and dashing against cliffsides and twirling boulders, they thunder down ten thousand gorges. These

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are the dangers all who come this way must face. Why do travelers make this journey? The Sword-Tower Peak saw us tall and noble from the heights. Here, a man could hold a pass against ten thousand soldiers, but if the man turned traitor, a wolf

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to his friends? In the morning we run from tigers, in the evening we flee from snakes, teeth and fangs that bite and grind, ready to chop men down like rows of hemp. None can deny that the city of silk has its pleasures but how can it compare

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with an early return home? High and hard is the road to Sichuan, higher and harder than the road to heaven. Once more, I turned to the west, gaze there, and sigh. And let me just read you another Li Bao poem if I find it here.

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Yeah, no. I will come across it soon. Yeah, here's Li Bao. One of his most famous poems is a four line endstop which is called: NOCTURNAL THOUGHTS

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At the foot of the bed, bright moonlight. Could it be frost on the earth? Raising my head, I look at the bright moon; lowering my head, I think of home. Here's another four-line end stop that I like very much. It's

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called: AT AUTUMN COVE At Autumn Cove, white monkeys, hundreds of them hopping and somersaulting like snowflakes in the wind. They coax and tug

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their young from the branches to drink and frolic with the moon as it rides the water. And finally from Li Bao: LISTENING TO MONK JUN PLAY THE LUTE

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In Sichuan, I met a monk descending Mount Emei, carrying a lute in a green silk case. When he played for me, fingers brushing the strings, I heard ten thousand pine trees murmur in the mountain valleys with a song, flowing spring, he washed

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my soul clean. And even though the echoes of his music blend with the tolling of frosty bells, I no longer notice the green hills turning gray, nor the autumn clouds that pile up, darkening the ravines.

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Let me read you some poems by the other great Tang Dynasty poet, of the greatest of Tang Dynasty poets, who lived from 712 to 770 as I mentioned before, and this is Li Bao's friend, though they were so different, the great Tu Fu. And

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that's spelled T-U-F-U if you people want to look up his work. Let me say that of books that I would suggest to you, there are a great- a two volume series that have come out, the Columbia Book of Chinese Poetry from early times to the 13th century

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with the translations by Burton Watson who is just terrific. And his translations of "Hanshan," or "Cold Mountain," are a whole book in themselves, and wonderful, and his translations of my favorite Chinese poet, Su Dongpo, are also in a book all

00:47:07.560 - 00:47:23.460

by themselves and are wonderful. The second volume which is from the 13th to the 18th century, in the Columbia Book of Chinese Poetry, is by Jonathan Chaves, C-H-A-V-E-S, and is also excellent. He has done a book by a Song Dynasty poet called Yang

00:47:23.490 - 00:47:47.520

Wanli, which is called, "Heaven My Blanket, Earth My Pillow," which is just an excellent book. And I hoped to read from it tonight, but we haven't had time. So let me read to you some of Tu Fu's poems here. Okay. Here is:

00:47:49.130 - 00:48:11.510

Tu Fu, in a poem called SPRING PROSPECT, and it certainly sounds like an attitude that one would have today. SPRING SCENE might be a better translation of it. The capital is in ruins but hills and rivers remain. In the

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city, spring, with plants and trees thick. In sorrow at the time, the flowers are splashed with tears. In grief at separation, the birds alarm the heart. Beacon fires of length three months, family letters are worth ten thousand pieces, my

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white hair, through scratching, is still shorter, it very nearly fails to support the hairpin I put around it. And he thinks of his wife and it goes like this: This night in Fuzhou, there will be moonlight, and there she will

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be gazing into it with the children already gone to sleep, not even in their dreams and innocence thinking of their father in Chang'an. Her black hair must be wet with dew of this autumn night and her white jade arms chilly with the cold.

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When, oh when shall we be together again, standing side by side at the window, looking at the moonlight with dry eyes? Tu Fu, recognizing his responsibility, had become part of the government and was exiled at several times and especially

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in the great rebellion which I wanted to read you about, which was called the- I forget it. The rebellion that occurred during the mid eighth century, and in which he had to leave the capitol in fear of his life. I'll just read some other old-

00:49:58.770 - 00:50:16.500

some other poems by him. Sunset glitter is on the beads of the curtains, spring flowers bloom in the valley, the gardens along the river are filled with perfume. Smoke of cooking, fires drifts over the slow barges,

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sparrows hop and tumble in the branches, whirling insect swarm in the air, who discovered that one cup of thick wine will dispel a thousand cares? And here's one which we will end the reading of Tu Fu on because

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it certainly reflects some of his attitudes, I did not read hi longer poems, and this i called SNOW, and this is my translation. New ghosts wail on the battlefield, I sit alone, an old

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man mumbling his poems. Clouds tumble down through the twilight, snowflakes flutter in the whirling wind, ladle put aside, the wine jar without a green drop left. I have to imagine the heat red in the stove. No news from any of the

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provinces. Grieving, I sit and write in the air. And as we wind down on the show, let me read some poems- well, let me read one of my favorites. Let me read two poems jumping to the Song Dynasty. Let me read two poems by Su Dongpo, my

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favorite poet, these are inversions by yours truly. And as there is so much strife and difference in China, let me read two poems as I said, by him and the first one is in mid-autumn of the year Ping Chen. And this for all Chinese of good heart

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and to take heart. Su Dongpo lived very simply. If I can get his dates here, and I'm sure I shall in two seconds... Su Dongpo lived in the Song dynasty in the year 1037 to 1101 AD, 1037 to 1101 AD. Here are these two poems:

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How long has the moon been in in the heavens? Wine cup raised I asked that of the blue sky. I do not know what year it is tonight inside the gates of heaven. I want to return there, riding the wind, but once more fear that jasper towers and jade mansions

00:52:54.310 - 00:53:15.460

so high would be too cold. I rise, dance, play with my clear shadow. How can this resemble the world of men? Circling the vermilion chamber, lowering itself through the carved window, the moon shines upon the one who cannot sleep. I should

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have no complaints, but why is it always full when people are apart? People have sorrow and joy, being apart and together. The moon has dimness and brightness, waxing and waning, things have not been perfect since time began. I only wish

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that people could live for many years, and across a thousand miles share this beauty. And the last poem, a picture of a happier China, written in 1063, again by Su Dongpo. It's called:

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A WALK IN THE COUNTRY An easterly breeze stirs fine dust in the road, first chance for strolling this spring, a time of leisure, good for drinking at roadside inns, the grass still too short to be

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crushed by wagon wheels. City people, tired of being enclosed by walls, clatter out at dawn, leaving the city empty. Songs and drums startle the hills, flowers and trees shake, picnic baskets litter the field and are poked and snapped at by crows.

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Who's that over there? Gathering a crowd, says he's a monk, scowling as he sells his charms to passers-by. "Silkworms! These will give you cocoons large as water jugs. Livestock? These will make your sheep as big as deer." Nobody really believes

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him. It's the spirit of spring they are buying in his charms. He grabs the money and when he has enough, he hurries off to an inn for wine, finally falls down drunk muttering, "These charms, they really work."

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This has been a special show tonight and it has been for those suffering students and citizens of China. And with hopes that next week will bring a much sunnier report from that great country, we have, or I have, presented an evening of

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the great Chinese poets did not do nearly enough of them, nearly enough planned. I should say that Plaza Books has provided a grant that helped make the last hour of programming possible. Plaza Books is located on the Pacific Garden Mall in Santa

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Cruz, and we appreciate their support. I'll be back with you next week when we will be celebrating the publication of, gosh, how long is it, sixty, sixty-five years ago of- is that right? Maybe sixty-seven years ago of James Joyce's great

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masterpiece Ulysses, because it will be two days or one day from Bloomsday, the day that is celebrated forever and will live forever in that novel. Until then, this is Mort Marcus saying, have a good week.