by Robert Wexelblatt
Note: Hsi-Wei’s Last Poem is what will probably be the last in a seven-story cycle of stories about Chen Hsi-wei, an imaginary Chinese poet of the Sui period.
From the Memoirs of The Tang Dynasty Minister, Fang Xuan-ling
In his last years, the poet Chen Hsi-wei gave up his travels and lived in a house given him by the Governor of Chiangling, a decent man though not over-generous. The place was made of warped planks salvaged from other edifices, had only two rooms, and just enough land for a small vegetable garden. There was also a tiny walled patio at the front which the poet, expressing gratitude rather than irony, was pleased to call his courtyard. This modest dwelling was not in the city but three li outside the gates of Chiangling in the middle of a plain of farmland planted mostly with rice and onions. Nearby was a village so insignificant that it did not appear on any official register or map. Because of the single mountain that appeared to have been dropped on the land by some whimsical god, the locals referred to their region Xia Shan (Under the Mountain) and that was what they called the village as well.
Hsi-wei’s settled mode of life was as simple and unvarying as his diet, but he was not completely isolated. From time to time visitors would seek him out, admirers, poetry-loving pilgrims who knew his work, or bored travelers to whom he was pointed out as a local curiosity. The poet entertained all sorts as best he could and in the same manner: he offered his visitors tea and asked them about themselves. Thanks to these callers, Hsi-wei was fairly well informed about conditions throughout the Empire. These were the years of Yang Guang whose reign of disasters brought the Sui dynasty to an abrupt end after only two generations. Hsi-wei knew the rumors that Yang had conspired with his mother to poison his father, Emperor Wen. Now he was saddened to learn of the repression of the Buddhist monasteries, the restoration of the rigid Confucian examination system, and he saw for himself the consequences of the new emperor’s mass conscription of troops for his four ruinous wars with the Goguryeo and of laborers for his colossal engineering projects, the Grand Canal and the reconstruction of the Great Wall, the ever-rising taxes to support it all. These depredations left the land short of men, the peasants destitute and often starving. The Emperor’s own luxurious ways were spoken of with disgust, and they were shameful indeed, even allowing for the exaggerations of his enemies. Unlike his faithful father, Yang kept a large number of official concubines and was said to have had scores of unofficial ones.
During his last years, Hsi-wei wrote little; it seemed to him as if his verses needed to be composed on the move. So there were few poems, yet he still made straw sandals to barter for food or to give as presents to his neighbors. The poet made good sandals; people prized them. Though he was content to live a solitary life, when he felt the need of company Hsi-wei walked into the village. Here he sat with the old men by the well but he preferred chatting with the old women, whose complaints were more eloquent and gossip much livelier. But both the men and the women feared for the future and lamented the absence of so many young men. The old fellows told stories about their youth, the wars in which they had fought or cleverly avoided, the hardships they had endured. They glorified their romances and bragged about how strong they had been. The old women told tales too, stories of intrigue, envy, and hypocrisy; but what they liked best was to speak of their grandchildren, who were either preternaturally bright, precociously robust toddlers or lazy, disrespectful, ungrateful good-for-nothing teenagers. Hsi-wei reflected that people see history much as these peasants did their descendants. It was either a long slog steadily uphill or a chute from a golden age straight to the dung heap. People like things to have shapes. It was only the very old who could look on history as they did on nature, a steady thing punctuated by seasons of peace and war, plenty and famine, yet fundamentally unchanging and unchangeable.
All this I learned in my youth when I myself was one of those who traveled to Chiangling and visited Chen Hsi-wei. In those days I dreamed of becoming a great poet, not a minister of state—or better still, a poet who amused himself with statecraft. Hsi-wei’s verses had inspired me in part because I foolishly believed I could do as well as he. After all, he was born a peasant, I told myself, whereas my father and grandfather had both filled the high post of Chief Registrar of Sung. As I write this I can feel my face turning red with shame.
Hsi-wei did not speak directly of how bad conditions had become under the new emperor. However, I do recall him telling me the following story.
“Last week I had a painful conversation with Mrs. Fung. Her given name is Hua, Fung Hua, and she’s a widow, so far as she can tell. A year and a half ago armed men came here and took away her husband Fung Bao along with some twenty other men. I understand it was to work on the canal, and it’s said that few ever return from that work. Anyway, it’s been a struggle for Mrs. Fung without her husband. She said that but for her oldest son, Gang, she and the other children might have starved over the winter. Though he is only thirteen each day he made his way up the mountain and cut wood to sell. Mrs. Fung wanted my advice on a difficult matter.” Here Hsi-wei paused and looked at me almost sternly, gesturing lightly to the silk robe I had put on for my visit. “You come from the capital, from Daxing?”
I said I did. I was proud to live in the great city but even more of having undertaken the journey to Chiangling.
“I wonder,” he mused. “Have you ever heard the expressions ‘propitious paw’ and ‘fortunate feet’?”
I said that these were phrases with which I was unfamiliar.
“No? Well, perhaps they haven’t made their way to the capital, but they are common among the peasants. Well, then, tell me, sir, what do you suppose they mean?”
I wanted to show Hsi-wei that I was not empty-headed. “The peasants are terribly superstitious. With them everything is a token of either good luck or bad. These phrases sound like some old wives’ tale. They examine a newborn’s hands and feet as a method of foretelling the infant’s future.”
Hsi-wei looked down and smiled in a way that felt like a reproach. “A propitious paw is a broken hand,” he explained. “Fortunate feet are fractured ones.” By then dusk had fallen and the poet turned his eyes on the black mass of the mountain young Gang had climbed the previous winter, hatchet in his unbroken hand, struggling upward on his two sound feet. It seemed to me that Hsi-wei was speaking to the mountain rather than to me when he said, “Unhappy is the land whose mothers must decide to cripple their sons’ limbs.”
After that we settled down and spoke far into the night of our mutual admiration for the ancient masters.
Before taking my leave, I asked Hsi-wei if I could possibly have a memento of my visit. What I wanted was something written in his own hand—anything, his name, only a single word. With the devoted enthusiasm of my years I promised I would treasure it always as the most prized of all my possessions.
Hsi-wei rose with a small groan. “When will you be leaving? Surely not tonight?”
“In the morning, Master.”
“Very well. If you could come by before taking to the road I’ll try to have something for you then. I fear it will be too little to acknowledge my gratitude for your kind visit, young sir.”
I was at Hsi-wei’s house at first light. He awaited me in his courtyard, greeted me warmly, wished me a safe journey back to the capital, then handed over a scroll wrapped tightly in braided straw. It contained the verses which follow, a gift infinitely more precious than I had requested. He spoke with typical humility—so different from the poets I had known in Daxing—saying he wished he had been able to produce something more worthy for me but, as it had been many months since he had taken up his brush, these lines were the best he could manage. “Please forgive my wretched calligraphy—what my old master Shen Kuo used to call my ‘bird’s-foot characters.’”
The poem itself appears to be entirely personal, the thoughts and feelings of a man approaching his end. Its theme is a common one, that all passes away. However, whenever I read this poem—very likely Hsi-wei’s last—I recall his story of the propitious paws and fortunate feet. I believe it was not only the end of his own life Hsi-wei contemplated that night but the fall of the Sui dynasty in which he and his generation had invested so much hope, seeing in Emperor Wen the salvation of the country. Looked at this way, Hsi-wei’s poem is a prophecy, a peasant’s judgment on the Emperor Yang who had embroiled the state in four ruinous wars with the Goguryeo, neglected to deal with incursions from the west, squandered the support his father had won from the nomads, and recklessly poured men and treasure into the Grand Canal and the Great Wall, as if one were the dynasty’s grave and the other its headstone.
Two years later, the military situation had become untenable. Emperor Yang was forced by Li Yuan to flee to the south where he was done away with by his own generals. As poison could not be found, a soldier named Linghu Xingda was commanded to strangle the detested emperor.
As for the poems of Chen Hsi-wei, despite what he wrote that night, they have outlasted his straw sandals.
I’m told that his grave can still be seen in the region of Xia Shan but that it requires considerable exertion to see it. His neighbors buried the poet’s body at the summit of the mountain.
This is the poem that I was given by Hsi-wei.
Yesterday I had a visitor, a young lord declaring he wants
to become a poet. His well-fed body was bent with humility,
yet his eyes glittered with intelligence and ambition.
“Come sit,” I said to calm him but he stood and recited
one poem, then another. “Not bad at all,” I said appreciatively,
not wishing to discourage the lad. Embarrassed, he bowed
and in a voice like that of a mother’s putting her child to bed,
said, “But Master, they are yours.” Then I made tea and we
sat watching the moon rise, talking of the Shijing masters.
How strange now to think of all those li I walked,
the provinces I traversed. By now, all my straw sandals
will have turned to dust, worn out by the feet of hard-working
peasants. Strange too to think of the poems I wrote long ago
and can no longer remember. They too will become so
much wind-borne chaff, having also served their uses.
Poems and sandals are all I made, workman-like things,
so many footsteps on dry roads, waiting for the rain.
From my little courtyard I used to watch the sun and moon,
then it was the days I observed; now it is whole seasons
marching in review. Like rainwater as it nears a drain,
time has begun to race, each year a smaller fraction of
my life. The mountain turns from green to brown to
white so swiftly that I believe a pair of old monks
beginning their ascent in springtime would be lost in
snow banks long before they glimpsed the top.
