57. The Zouma River Flows: Sending Off Senior Official Feng, Who Is Launching a Military Expedition to the West

A poem by Cen Can, translated by Hyun Woo Kim

Do you not see?

The Zouma River flowing to a snowy beach;

The boundless sandplain entering the sky yellow;

The wind growling at night in September of Luntai;

A river breaking stones into the size of a bushel;

The rocks running in disarray, covering the earth along with the wind.

The grass of the Huns turn yellow, and the horses put on weight in time;

To the west of Jin Mountain, smoke and dust are seen flying over;

The House of Han's grand general goes west into battle.

The general does not take off the metal armor at night;

Marching in the middle of the night, spears clank against each other;

The wind's end is like a knife, as if cutting faces.

The horses' hair wears the snow, the sweat rising as steam;

On Wuhua and Lianqian, it turns back into ice;

Writing the manifesto in a tent, the inkstone's water freezes.

The mounted bandits, hearing this, must feel fear in their gallbladders,

Should know their short weapons cannot dare engage in battles, and

Wait at the western gate of Cheshi to offer the spoils of war.

「走馬川行奉送封大夫出師西征」

君不見

走馬川行雪海邊

平沙莽莽黃入天

輪臺九月風夜吼

一川碎石大如斗

隨風滿地石亂走

匈奴草黃馬正肥

金山西見煙塵飛

漢家大將西出師

將軍金甲夜不脫

半夜軍行戈相撥

風頭如刀面如割

馬毛帶雪汗氣蒸

五花連錢旋作冰

幕中草檄硯水凝

虜騎聞之應膽懾

料知短兵不敢接

車師西門佇獻捷

From Hyun Woo:

It has been a long time since we read a poem from Cen Can! Recently, I have learned that a character called Cheng Shen, based on Cen Can, appears in the Chinese TV series The Longest Day in Changan. (You still remember that Changan was the capital of the Tang Empire, right?) The reason why I mention this is because I felt a need to explain a bit about my choice regarding the romanization of the poet’s name.

The poet’s name, 參, can be pronounced in four ways. (Yes, Chinese characters can be wild.) Two among them are “shen” and “can”. Most online search results favor pronouncing the poet’s name as “shen”, and the TV series mentioned above seems to be no exception. Even Chinese encyclopedias and textbooks designate the pronunciation as “shen”.

But I am sticking with the pronunciation “can”. Why? The answer is in poems. There were three poets of Song, the dynasty that succeeded Tang, who mentioned Cen Can in their poems: Kong Pingzhong, Liao Xingzhi, and Liu Kezhang. From their works, we can infer that 參 should rhyme with the characters 菴, 蠶, 甘, 南, 談, 柑, and 酣. Their pronunciations? “an”, “can”, “gan”, “nan”, “tan”, “gan”, and “han”! It seems the claim that we should pronounce the poet’s name as “shen” stands no chance against this evidence. Poets always know it the best.

Now, to brief explanations to some phrases in today’s poem. Wuhua and Liangqian are certain breeds of horse, and 草檄, which I translated as “manifesto”, refers to a piece of writing that would let the enemies of China know why they deserved to be conquered. (Yes, a very kind and thoughtful way of saying they are going to get killed.) Though Cen Can served in the army, he was not a soldier but a secretary and scribe to Feng, whose name appears in the poem’s title. Writing such a manifesto in a tent and witnessing the water freezing on an inkstone must have been Cen Can’s own experience (back then, an inkstick would be grinded and mixed with water on an inkstone to produce ink). In addition, Cheshi was a country in the west from Tang.

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