36. A Song on the Frontier: the First of Two Poems
A poem by Wang Changling, translated by Hyun Woo Kim
Cicadas crying, an empty mulberry forest;
August, the road of Xiaoguan.
To and from the frontier, it has become cold;
Here and there, yellow reeds.
So far, the wanderers from You and Bing have
All grown old together in the desert.
Do not emulate the chivalrous young men,
Who boast that Ziliu are good.
「 塞上曲」
蟬鳴空桑林
八月蕭關道
出塞入塞寒
處處黃蘆草
從來幽幷客
皆共塵沙老
莫學遊俠兒
矜夸紫騮好
From Hyun Woo:
Remember Wang Changling? We read a poem of his back in July. After four months, we are reading another piece by him. “August” in today’s poem should be understood as some time in September since Tang poets used the lunar calendar. Cicadas cry in summer, and it is rather odd that they are still crying even though “it has become cold.” In a certain sense, they are something that shouldn’t be there. The phrase “an empty mulberry forest” should in turn mean that the mulberry trees have lost their leaves, making the forest appear empty. Thus Wang Changling opens his poem with the sense of seasonal grief and not belonging somewhere.
Xiaoguan is the name of a gateway. Passing through it will either mean heading to or returning from the frontier. You (pronounced yo-woo) and Bing are the names of provinces, famous for their adventurous and chivalrous spirits. Many young men from those provinces must have ventured to the frontier, but they have “All grown old together in the desert.” Accordingly, the poet urges the readers not to “emulate the chivalrous young men/Who boast that Ziliu are good.” Ziliu refers to a famous breed of horse, and even Li Bai wrote a poem about it. Still, a Ziliu will not be able to help the young men who ride out to the frontier, who will never find what they seek there and grow old.
If you enjoyed my work, you can buy me a cup of tea. I am not a coffee person, by the way.
Phenomenal poem and great background. Thank you!
Of course, the adventurous young men from the frontier provinces want to go out into the wild. And, like most efforts to find adventure, and to leave what we know behind, they simply end up with a routine life of a different sort, in a different place. They grow old in the desert, rather than growing old at home.
They leave the tedium of the settled lands where grain is grown, for wide spaces where the horses are bred. The horses of central Asia were imported into the civilized lands on the periphery. This is a line of business that went on for literally thousands of years. As late as 1900 we can read in Kim by Rudyard Kipling of his wily horse trader Mahbub Ali bringing his horses across the mountains through Afghanistan, and down into the plains of Hindostan to sell. The horse traders live a wild, free, risky life, which the settled people of the plains romanticize and admire, but don’t adopt for themselves.
The strange mixing of the seasons, where the cicadas of the summer are somehow heard in the autumn of the year, suggests that the writer is mixing up his memory and his feelings about the incidents which he has seen, and perhaps participated in.