The Simple Wisdom of Meiyao Chen

True words are not fancy

And fancy words are not true

- Dao De Jing

If we haven’t unlearned one thing, it’s our respect for obscurity. Wall Street swindlers and their government bag men drop a few acronyms, and we walk away muttering. A clutch of deconstructionist professors publish tomes of psychobabble, and their students come away believing thoughts can be crimes.

Things weren’t much different in the Song Dynasty. Imperial exam graduates reached heights of obfuscation that would leave Noam Chomsky slack-jawed. Maybe it was bitterness – his buddy Xiu Ouyang got all the poet’s accolades. Maybe it was disappointment – he didn’t pass the Imperial exams until he was forty. Certainly the death of his wife and child had something to do with it. Pain and disillusionment pushed Mei Yaochen to produce a radically different poetry: honest, personal, and striving above all for simplicity.

So don’t be impressed the next time you read an incomprehensible editorial. The Psalms, the Dao De Ching, and certainly the work of Mei Yaochen, possess simplicity far more eloquent then anything that comes up on a politician’s teleprompter or the pages of The Nation.

Writing of My Sorrow

Heaven’s already taken my wife,
Now it’s also taken my son.
My two eyes are still not dry,
My heart desires only death.
Rain falls and soaks into the earth,
A pearl sinks into the ocean’s depths.
Dive in the sea and you can seek the pearl,
Dig in the earth and you can see the water.
Only people return to the source below.
For all of time. This we know.
I hold my chest; to whom now can I turn?
Emaciated, a ghost in the mirror.

Sacrifice to the Cat that Scared All the Rats

When I had my Five White cat,
The rats did not invade my books.
This morning Five White died,
I sacrifice with rice and fish.
I see you off in the middle of the river,
I chant for you: I won’t neglect you.
Once when you’d bitten a rat,
You took it crying round the yard.
You wanted to scare all the rats,
So as to make my cottage clean.
Since we came on board this boat,
On the boat we’ve shared a room.
Although the grain is dry and scarce,
I eat not fearing piss or theft.
That’s because of your hard work,
Harder working than chickens or pigs.
People stress their mighty steeds,
Saying nothing’s like a horse or ass.
Enough- I’m not going to argue,
But cry for you a little.

Mourning Loss

When we two first became husband and wife
Was seventeen years ago today.
We couldn’t look at each other enough,
What loss could compare to this?
Already, my temples are mostly white,
I’d rather my body had finished its time.
In the end, we’ll share a tomb;
Still not dead, I weep and weep.

A Rural Home

The cock crows three times; the sky is almost light.
Someone’s lined up bowls of rice, along with flasks of tea.
Anxiously, the peasants rush to start the ploughing early,
I pull aside the willow shutter and gaze at the morning stars.

Related posts:

1. Chen Jiagang’s Third Front

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