Finding Them Gone: Visiting China's Poets of the Past by Red Pine

Author:Red Pine [Pine, Red]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Copper Canyon Press
Published: 2016-06-01T04:00:00+00:00

The peal of a temple bell as day turns to dusk

the noise of the Yuliang Ferry as it struggles across

people walking along the shore to their villages by the river

me taking a boat too returning to Lumenshan

the Lumen moon lighting treetops above the clouds

me suddenly arriving at Master P’ang’s hut

on a long lonesome trail past pine-guarded cliffs

only a recluse would take

My friend Gary Flint once retraced Meng’s route between the city and the temple and posted photos on his website, Mountainsongs.net. They’re still there as of this writing. Gary was another pilgrim. However, instead of a taxi, he hired a boat and floated down the Han past the ten-kilometer-long Yuliang sandbar until he was as close as he could get to Lumenshan. Then he disembarked and hiked to the temple, which he said was an hour from the shore. Presumably, that was what Meng’s song was for. The location of the shore, no doubt, had changed, but at night the path would have seemed long and lonely.

I returned to the grave to collect my cups and read the two poems on either side of the tombstone. The characters were barely legible, but the poems were short. One of them was by Wang Wei, “Crying for Meng Hao-jan” :

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