The Alchemist

In the heavy robes, embroidered brightness, clouds
Exquisite tapestry, perfumed
Hibiscus reds deep in greenery
Mountain scenery, water
Falling
Stitched into the cape

I stare and stare, remembering songbird notes
A caged crane released

Sleepy dusk

Spring

A vaulted chamber echoing rain

 

To Secretary Liu

In those times your army, old hands every one
Made roads to march down
Singing soldier songs
In March, in driving rain
Fording Fenchuan River
Or by the Junshui
With June's countryside in flower

Times change, from horizon to horizon
Land won with spears is walled

Dusty farms, no curfews now

People talking past midnight

Old battlefields grassed over
The guests snoozing drunk on the lawn

I set aside my writing materials as verses appear
From nowhere

The characters rise off the parchments

Bright fish
Surfacing
Scattered images on water

 

Letter to a Friend

What good is city life without companions
Even on back roads we look for friends

Days go by

My dress of best brocade gone for cash

The mirror silver fogs
So delicate, I open its case
Seeing across my face my hair falling tangled

Musky incense coils from the dish
Its carved shape seems to change each time I look

It must be spring
All the love notes young men leave
Asking me to hurry
In the alcoves setting portraits of other beauties
But it's me they wait for

The willows leaning to this new philosophy

The plum's tight
Tight buds

 

Poem for Zian

All the wine in the world
And still this sadness, not finding a way
To break a hundred knots of distance
Between us

The rarest flower disappears, returning in spring

The boats of travellers
Catch in willows east and west

So many shapes in passing clouds

Affection is a river
Everything with it
Moving

I want someone who loves me for myself

It's too lonely here in Jade Tower
My face in the wine pot

 

Letter from the Province

I live idle days, writing poems
Looking towards Wangwu Mountains
Thinking of our time there

I let my horse follow the water course, east
West
Confusing north with south

I was thinking of our nights together
A rainy time of shared feasts

And then as flowers emerged on the branches
I climbed the stairs alone

Later your return, so sudden I couldn't speak
I was so happy

Our little house in the alley
So cosy

Now Xiangru's lute has lost its strings

Swallows mate and separate

As autumn comes, remember me
Remember
The Yellow River

The reasons for visiting

 

Translations copyright © Estill Pollock, 2006.

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Yu Xuanji was born in Xian, ca. 844. Traditionally, she was described as an experienced courtesan who became concubine, or "lesser wife", to Li Yi, a minor civil servant who later abandoned her. She eventually returned to Xian, living there in reduced circumstances.

Later, she became a Taoist priestess in the Xian Yi Temple. Quasi-historical accounts suggest that she met her death by execution ca. 871, following the murder of a Temple novice. The lurid details of events surrounding her death were not extant until several years after the event, and the inclusion of her poems as curiosities (poems by ghosts, poems by women, et al.) in anthologies of the later Tang period, indicate that there may have been promotional elements in the account.

Estill Pollock lives in Essex. His large collection, Blackwater Quartet (Kittiwake Editions), appeared in 2005. The Yu Xuanji poems are appearing shortly as part of his eighth collection, Relic Environments (Cinnamon Press, Blaenau Ffestiniog, 2006).