An Evening at Professor Eliot's Home
Before saying goodnight, Mrs. Eliot pours us one more cup of tea, and Professor Eliot reads us a few poems from the Cold Mountain poets, more graffiti artists than poets, roaming the Chinese countryside, scrawling and etching their poems on rocks along the roadside, on farmhouses and barns, on monastery walls. These are not poems he has translated, his interest lies in Japanese poetry, and Japanese women, or, at least one—his wife.
He reads this from Han Shan, and translated by J. P. Seaton:
"If you're looking for a peaceful place,
Cold Mountain's always a refuge.
A little breeze, breath of the shaded pines,
and if you listen close, the music's even better.
Under the pines, a graying man,
soft, soothingly, reading aloud from Lao Tzu."
Professor Eliot asks each of us to put the poem into our own words. Not asking much, is he? Though I know the form is wrong, I come up with this:
Along the trail to Cold Mountain—a refuge.
Windswept pines offer shade,
a cooling breeze offers this, listen—music!
Beneath the pines, grandfather quietly reads Lao Tzu.
~~~
He reads another. This one by Shih Te:
"A long way off, I see men in the dirt,
enjoying whatever it is that they find in the dirt . . .
When I look at them there in the dirt,
my heart wells full of sadness.
Why sympathize with men like these?
I can remember the TASTE of dirt."
My heart wells, too. I won't even attempt this one, but Professor Eliot tells us to put ourselves in the poet's shoes, and use his eyes, but make the words our own:
Along the flooded fields, men and women
toil at their task—backbreaking labor!
Each stalk pushed into the mud.
The taste of earth haunts me.
~~~
"One more," says Professor Eliot. "Then you guys clear out, it's almost time for Breaking Bad." He reads one by Wang Fan-chih, a fitting poem on which to end the evening:
"Listen you, enjoy your time,
you really don't have very long.
You were born just a moment ago,
in another moment, you'll be gone."
I shouldn't touch this one, either. But I do, because that is my task at hand:
I would call this "Mother."
Soon the snow will fall
and I will cross the river.
I am impatient.
~~~
Marcy, Colin, Antoinette, and I say our goodnights, and make our way into the night. High clouds cut the moon.
Poetry by one trick pony
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Written on 2015-01-07 at 00:28
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