Tu Fu Watches the Spring Festival Across Serpentine Lake
In 753 Tu Fu, along with a crowd of others, watched the imperial court—the emperor’s mistress, her sisters, the first minister—publicly celebrate the advent of spring.
Intricate to celebrate still-delicate
raw spring, peacocks in passement of gold
thread, unicorns embroidered palely in silver.
These are not women but a dream of women:—
bandeaux of kingfisher-feather
jewelry, pearl
netting that clings to the breathing body
veil what is, because touched earth
is soiled earth, invisible.
As if submission to dream were submission
not only to breeding but to
one’s own nature,
what is gorgeous is remote now, pure, true.
*
The Mistress of the
Cloud-Pepper Apartments
has brought life back to the
emperor, who is
old. Therefore charges of gross
extravagance, of
pandering incest between her
sister Kuo and her cousin
are, in the emperor’s
grateful eyes, unjust. Her wish
made her cousin first minister.
Three springs from this
spring, the arrogance of the
new first minister
will arouse such hatred and
fury even the frightened
emperor must accede to his
execution. As bitterly to
hers. She will be carried on a
palanquin of
plain wood to a Buddhist chapel
deep in a wood and strangled.
*
Now the Mistress of the
Cloud-Pepper Apartments,—
whose rooms at her insistence
are coated with
a pepper-flower paste into
which dried pepper-
flowers are pounded because the
rooms of the Empress
always are coated with paste
into which dried pepper-
flowers are pounded and she is
Empress
now in all but name,—is
encircled by her
sisters, Duchesses dignified by
imperial
favor with the names of states
that once had
power, Kuo, Ch’in, Han.
Now rhinoceros-horn
chopsticks, bored, long have
not descended.
The belled carving knife wastes
its labors. Arching
camel humps, still perfect,
rise like purple hills
from green-glazed cauldrons.
Wave after
wave of imperial eunuchs,
balancing fresh
delicacies from the imperial
kitchens, gallop up
without stirring dust.
*
With mournful sound that would
move demon
gods, flutes and drums now
declare to the air
he is arrived. Dawdlingly
he arrives, as if the cloud of
suppliants clinging to him cannot obscure the sun.
Power greater than that of all
men except one
knows nothing worth rushing toward
or rushing from. Finally the
new first minister
ascends the pavilion. He greets
the Duchess of
Kuo with that slight
brutality intimacy induces.
Here at last is power that your
soul can warm its hands against!
Beware: success has made him
incurious, not less
dangerous.
—Frank Bidart
After Tu Fu, “Ballad of Lovely Women.” In conception and many phrases, this version is indebted to David Hawkes’ A Little Primer of Tu Fu.
About the Author
Frank Bidart's most recent book is Star Dust, a finalist for the National Book Award.
