Li He

The most repeated story about Li He is that he’d spend his days riding a horse through the countryside writing lines of poetry on scraps of paper. He’d toss these scraps over his shoulder while an attendant followed and collected them in an old sack. Each evening, Li’s mother would look at the piles of scrap paper and say her son wouldn’t stop until he vomited up his heart. A poetic prodigy, Li secured a seat for the notoriously selective national exams when he was not yet twenty. When he arrived in the capital to sit for them, he learned he couldn’t participate because his late father’s name was a homophone of the degree he wanted. Some think that Li’s rival or an enemy of his patron brought this to an official’s attention. In any case, it meant Li would never be eligible for a high-paying government job. He cracked up and spent the rest of his life in poor health and melancholy. He managed to obtain a minor bureaucratic job that helped him stay afloat, but he made much less money than his friends with more important positions, which may have been worse than making no money at all. He died at 26, his hair entirely white. His contemporaries assumed his death was due to sexual exhaustion and wild living, though we now suspect tuberculosis. The poetry he left behind is dense with allusion, blood, and ghosts.

Hunting for jade! Hunting for jade!
Only crystal-emeralds will do,
For cutting into Shake-as-she-walks,
Only to please the eye.
For an old man hungry and cold,
Even dragons must grieve,
The mist-hung waters of Indigo River
Not clear, nor white.

On rainy nights, on the ridge of a hill,
He sups on hazel-nuts,
Blood that wells from a cuckoo’s maw
The old man’s tears.
The waters of Indigo River are gorged
With human lives;
Men dead a thousand years
Still loathe these torrents.

A steep hillside, wind in the cypress,
Whistle of rain—
On spring-dripping rocks he hangs from a rope,
Green curling and swirling,
Cold village, white thatched hut—
He frets for the children he loves,
On ancient terraces, steps of stone,
The Heartbreak grass.

One quarter lowers black while three turn purple,
Ice vaults the Yellow River, fish and dragons die.
Tree-bark three feet thick splits against the grain,
Chariots of a ton or more travel on the river.

Frost-flowers on the grass, big as silver coins,
No brandished blade could penetrate this sombre sky.
Swirling in a raging sea the flying ice-floes roar,
Soundless hang mountain waterfalls, rainbows of jade.

Heaven overcast,
Earth in shadow.
Nine-headed serpents devouring men’s souls,
Snow and frost snapping men’s bones
Snarling dogs, barking
Hunt us down,
Licking their paws, greedy for the flesh
Of the man with an orchid girdle.
Once God sends a chariot to bear you away,
Your misfortunes will end.
His sword adorned with stars of jade,
His yoke of yellow gold.

Though I have a horse to ride,
I cannot go home,
For the waves that drowned Li-yang
Loom large as mountains.
Poisonous, horned dragons glaring,
Rattling their brazen rings.
Lions and griffons drooling
From slavering jaws.
Bao Jiao spent his whole life
Sleeping under straw.
Yan Hui’s hair was mottled white
When he was twenty-nine.
Yet Yan Hui’s blood was not corrupt,
Nor had Bao Jiao offended Heaven.
Heaven was afraid the jaws would close on them,
So it treated them thus.
If you still doubt my discernment, sir,
Think of the man raving wildly by the wall,
As he wrote his “Heavenly Questions.”

As the sun sets in the western hills
The eastern hills grow dark,
A whirlwind blows the horses along,
Steeds trampling the clouds.
Painted zithers and plain flutes
Play soft, weird tunes,
To the rustle of embroidered skirts
She treads the autumn dust.

Cassia leaves stripped by the wind,
Cassia seeds fall,
Blue raccoons are weeping blood
As shivering foxes die.
On the ancient wall, a painted dragon,
Tail inlaid with gold,
The Rain God is riding it away
To an autumn tarn.
Owls that have lived a hundred years,
Turned forest demons,
Laugh wildly as an emerald fire
Leaps from their nests.

The witch pours out a libation of wine,
And clouds cover the sky,
In a jade brazier charcoal burns—
The incense booms.
Gods of the sea and mountain demons
Flock to her seat,
Crackle of burning paper money
As a whirlwind moans.

She plays a love-wood lute adorned
With golden, dancing simurghs,
Knitting her brows, she plucks a note
For each word uttered.
She calls down stars and summons demons
To savour meat and drink,
When mountain-goblins come to eat,
Men are breathless and hushed.
Colours of sunset low in a coign
Of Zhong-nan range,
Long lingers the Spirit. Something or Nothing?
We cannot tell.
The Spirit’s anger, the Spirit’s delight
Shows in her face,
Ten thousand riders escort him back
To the emerald hills.