Art: Where the Clouds Meet the Mountain by Louis Fiorucci
Li Bai translations by Yun Wang
Li Bai (701–762), or “Li Po”, known as the Exiled Immortal, is the most celebrated and beloved poet in Chinese history. These poems are from Yun Wang’s Chinese/English bilingual poetry book manuscript, “The Moon Over Ten Thousand Valleys: Poems of Li Bai”
Untitled by Louis Fiorucci
江行寄远
刳木出吴楚
危槎百余尺
疾风吹片帆
日暮千里隔
别时酒犹在
已为异乡客
思君不可得
愁见江水碧
A Letter from the River Journey
Hollowed out tree-trunk from Wuchu
The raft once towering a hundred feet
Fierce wind blows the single sail
A thousand miles away by sunset
Still feeling the wine from our parting
I am already a guest in another land
Missing you now beyond my reach
My thoughts darken a river of emerald
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Untitled by Louis Fiorucci
江上寄巴东故人
汉水波浪远
巫山云雨飞
东风吹客梦
西落此中时
觉后思白帝
佳人与我违
瞿塘饶贾客
音信莫令稀
A Letter on the Yangtze to an Old friend from Badong
Han River waves churn into the distance
Clouds and rain dance the Wu Mountains
East wind blew away a traveler’s dream
Dropped it off west into the perfect setting
I wake in reverie of White Emperor City
Yet the beauty is no longer by my side
Merchants swarm the Qutang Pass
Don’t make your letters scarce
Li Bai wrote this poem in 726 AD. Han River is a branch of the Yangtze. The Wu Mountains span Wu Pass and most of Qutang Pass. “Clouds and rain in the Wu Mountains” is usually the euphemism for sex. Song Yu (298 BC-222 BC) wrote of two Kings of Chu from different times dreaming of sleeping with the Goddess of the Wu Mountains, who revealed herself as morning clouds and dusk rain. White Emperor City is on the west end of Qutang Pass, and upstream on the Yangtze. Badong is downstream from Qutang Pass. The old friend is the beauty in Li Bai’s dream. Merchants also served as letter couriers.
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Untitled by Louis Fiorucci
乌栖曲
姑苏台上乌栖时
吴王宫里醉西施
吴歌楚舞欢未毕
青山欲衔半边日
银箭金壶漏水多
起看秋月坠江波
东方渐高奈乐何
The Crow Perching Song
When crows perched on Gusu Terrace
Xishi the beauty got drunk in the Wu Palace
Before Wu songs and Chu dances could end
A blue mountain swallowed half of the sun
The gold waterclock drained to its silver arrow’s end
The King rose to see autumn moon fall into river waves
Unsated yet couldn’t stop the dawn bleaching the east
Li Bai wrote this poem in 726 AD. Xi Shi (~506-473 BC), of the Kingdom of Yue, was the most famous beauty in Chinese history. She was trained by the King of Yue to keep the King of Wu occupied to the exclusion of all other matters, in order to destroy the Kingdom of Wu, and restore the Kingdom of Yue. She succeeded.
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Untitled by Louis Fiorucci
下终南山过斛斯山人宿置酒
暮从碧山下
山月随人归
却顾所来径
苍苍横翠微
相携及田家
童稚开荆扉
绿竹入幽径
青萝拂行衣
欢言得所憩
美酒聊共挥
长歌吟松风
曲尽河星稀
我醉君复乐
陶然共忘机
Down from Zhongnan Mountain, Met Hermit Husi and Stayed the Night with Wine
I descended a turquoise ridge at dusk
The mountain moon followed my track
I looked back for the path that led me
Blue haze hung across darkened green
A friend took me by the arm to his farm
Children came to open the bramble door
Emerald bamboos mark secluded paths
Tree moss brushes my travel clothes
We repose in joyful conversation
Raise cups brimming with exquisite wine
Sing full-throatedly about the pine wind
The tune ends with the Milky Way fading
I am drunk you can’t stop laughing
Together we forget the world of schemes
Li Bai probably wrote this poem in 731 AD, when he came down from seclusion in the Zhongnan Mountain.
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长干行
妾发初复额
折花门前剧
郎骑竹马来
绕床弄青梅
同居长干里
两小无嫌猜
十四为君妇
羞颜未尝开
低头向暗壁
千唤不一回
十五始展眉
愿同尘与灰
常存抱柱信
岂上望夫台
十六君远行
瞿塘滟滪堆
五月不可触
猿声天上哀
门前迟行迹
一一生绿苔
苔深不能扫
落叶秋风早
八月蝴蝶黄
双飞西园草
感此伤妾心
坐愁红颜老
早晚下三巴
预将书报家
相迎不道远
直至长风沙
The Changgan Song
When my hair first covered my forehead
I plucked blossoms and played in the yard
You came riding on a bamboo horse
We circled a fenced well tossing unripe plums
Both grew up in Changgan Place
Between us never suspicion or jealousy
I became your wife at age fourteen
My face too shy to bloom a smile
I bowed my head toward a dark corner
Called a thousand times didn’t answer once
At age fifteen I unknit my brows
Ready to follow you into dust and ashes
I’d drown hugging the appointed beam to be true
Never expected to climb a husband-watching terrace
You’ve journeyed far since I was sixteen
Toward the Yanyu Shoals at the Qutang Gorge
Don’t sail near the reef in the Fifth Month
The sky fills with the gibbons’ dirge
The path you lingered on before our door
Overgrows with green moss bit by bit
I can’t sweep away the thick moss
Autumn wind arrives early in falling leaves
Yellow butterflies appear in the Eighth Month
Dance in pairs above west garden grass
This very sight breaks my heart
My beauty withers as I sit in gloom
When you return downstream past Sanba
Send a letter home ahead of your boat
I shall cross any distance to meet you
Even at Long Wind Sands by the Yangtze
Untitled by Louis Fiorucci
Li Bai wrote this poem in 725 AD. “The Changgan Song” was the name of an ancient folk tune; each poem with the title is meant as lyric to the tune. Changgan Place was an ancient town in Nanjing. “Hugging the appointed beam” alludes to a story from Zhuang Zi, about a man named Wei Sheng who had a date with a woman under the bridge. The woman did not come but the water level suddenly rose. Wei Sheng wanted to keep his word and didn’t leave, and drowned hugging a beam under the bridge. Long Wind Sands is about 350km from Nanjing.
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About the author:
Yun Wang is the author of poetry books “The Book of Mirrors” (White Pine Press Poetry Prize 2020, forthcoming 2021), “The Book of Totality” (Salmon Poetry Press, 2015), and “The Book of Jade” (Winner of the 15th Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize, Story Line Press, 2002), and the book of poetry translations “Dreaming of Fallen Blossoms: Tune Poems of Su Dong-Po” (White Pine Press, 2019). Wang’s poems have been published in numerous literary journals, including The Kenyon Review, Prairie Schooner, Cimarron Review, Salamander Magazine, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Green Mountains Review, and International Quarterly. Her translations of classical Chinese poetry have been published in The Kenyon Review Online, Salamander Magazine, Poetry Canada Review, Willow Springs, Kyoto Journal, Bat City Review, Xavier Review, Connotation Press, and elsewhere. Wang was born in China, and came to the U.S. for graduate school in 1985. She is an astrophysicist at California Institute of Technology, currently focusing on developing space missions to explore the Universe.
In the artist’s words:
I am a photographer diagnosed with having Narcolepsy with Cataplexy. The sleep deprivation I suffer from traps me in a limbo between the dreaming unconscious and waking life. When I sleep, I am deprived of regulated REM and deep sleep. This means my conscious mind is always aware of the dream state. I awake feeling like I lived another life, never having slept, waking to this life only to find the subconscious mind intruding on my conscious state.
The following images depict my life with Narcolepsy and Cataplexy. They are the physical and psychological landscapes that I navigate in a world existing between the conscious and unconscious minds. My dreaming and waking life blur together in a haze as if I am lost in the undefined boundaries between the concrete and the ethereal, in the place where the mountains meet the clouds.