Poems by Poet Cao Tian [China]

Poet Cao Tian [China] 

Poet Cao Tian, a famous poet and writer in contemporary China, was born in 1968 in Lankao County, Henan Province. He holds PhD degree in law, a member of the Chinese Writers' Association, and is the author of seven books such as Heroes Under Heaven, Symphony Between Heaven and Earth, Taken to the Heather, etc., and some of his poems and prose have been included into textbooks for middle school and university students. He is the recipient of the annual golden medal prize by People’s Literature and Competition of Chinese Poetry Composition. Some of his poems have been translated into many foreign languages. In 2012 he is included into Cambridge Who’s Who Across the World. He is currently residing in Hainan.

The Embroidered Guard 

Spring-blade glints in dark of night,

Flying-fish robes prowl through streets and lanes.

Yanshan snowflakes, large as mats of white,

A thousand miles of ice will break the Ming’s last reins.

Torture serves to wring the truth they crave,

Confessions bought with blood and burning brand.

The whip unfolds in blossoms on the slave,

The iron sears the dynasty’s hidden wound so grand.

Confessions torn, iron chains congeal to frost,

Wolf-hair brush and cinnabar ink judge human fate.

Wind sweeps the barren mounds where lives are lost,

White bones lie in the field; no spring fires come of late.

Cold crows peck at the dying sun’s last light,

Dusk soaks through the palace walls that crumble slow.

The dragon throne wears dust in layers thick and tight,

While wine and meat rot behind the vermilion gate below.

Wax pills and secret letters rot in frozen ground,

Yanshan snow falls year on year the same,

Covering the crimes where guilt is found,

And veiling too the dynasty’s decline and shame.

The Snow of Winter, Chongzhen’s Eleventh Year

Snow is the blind headsman, cold and white,

That turns the world between the Yanshan peaks

Into the last white silk of Ming’s last night.

Each eave within the high red walls now seeks

To look, through haze, like cranes with necks wrenched tight.

The north wind steals a glance at memorials red,

Stacked on the dragon desk like human skin,

With cinnabar marks that seem like eyes of dead,

Staring at the emperor and the empty hall within.

At Coal Hill the locust branch holds a rope’s tight knot,

It sways when the bleak wind blows,

As if someone were swinging there, in that cold spot.

The shadow falls—the face of Chongzhen shows,

Yet features none; the face is blank and forgot.

Henan’s rebel snow buries the wheat neck-deep,

And buries too the refugees’ thin ankles in their weep.

Black blood-tracks in the filthy snow they keep,

And each black flower, seen close, is but a skull-heap.

Hong Chengchou’s camp flies white banners high,

Not for the rites of war, but for his conscience dead.

The soldiers’ armor glows with corpse-light in the sky,

Like living dead they march with frozen tread.

They hide their stiffened hands in padded sleeves so deep,

And wait for the funeral of a dynasty’s sleep.

The eunuch’s bloodless hands hold an edict colder than ice,

On blank paper the words “By Imperial Order” stand,

The ink is thicker than the dragon’s blood in its device.

The snow falls harder, burying the Forbidden Land,

The emperor on the throne becomes a statue of ice.

From where comes the black swan that lands on the pillar tall?

The wind still coils within the palace wall,

And faintly comes the rebel song to break the gate,

A broken folk song heard too late...

The Sage of Chess

Black and white stones wake the midnight still,

Nineteen lines hold the years’ cross and fill.

Hands rise and fall, mountains and rivers surge,

Sitting alone, the lone moon meets the dying lamp’s urge.

I won the hall’s full red, yet lost to empty air,

Love and hate both reflect upon this board so fair.

One stone, one heart, in honor and disgrace I stand,

The human game is fierce—who judges by the victor’s hand?

Tonight in Yanshan the blizzard falls,

It will crush the Forbidden City, crush the walls.

All turns to white, so clean, so bare,

The whole

 game ends in frozen air.

  (Translated by Prof. Yu Xia)