Tang Dynasty poet Li Bai, translated by Gary Geddes with the assistance of George Liang.
Battle of South City
Last year’s battle at the source of Sang Gang,
this year’s at Tsing Leung basin.
Teoshi rains slice through the ranks,
horses graze on the snows of T’ien Shan.
Long marches, years of toil, for what:
three armies brought to their knees.
Huns sowed slaughter in their midst
and left a crop of bones upon the land.
Chin raised up its wall to stop invaders,
Han then kept alive the beacon fires.
Flames of warning aren’t extinguished
and no end to fighting yet in sight.
Casualties strewn on every hand,
cries of dying horses pierce the sky.
Vultures rip and disembowel the dead,
they leave intestines hanging from the trees.
When soldiers’ bodies fertilize the weeds,
what value have a general’s strategies?
The war machine’s so violent and cruel,
let saints employ it as a last resort.
One Response
For I quake…with indignation and gratefulness
The world is my country
Humanity is my immediate family
All life is my kin
Ahimsa is my spirituality
Altruism is my career
I recognize nor honor nor respect any illusory borders or boundaries
I can perceive of neither any ethicality nor more than one race
This world is not mine to own
This place I borrow from our children
As a temporary guest to tend with gratitude and reverence for them
To raise my fist in anger and retribution
Is neither my right nor argument to induce
My wit is a tool to teach
Peace is…inevitable
I am better than no one
Yet less than none
I am just a humble seed
I serve pantheism
The path is struggling Faith
The endeavor is fortitude of conscience
The aspiration is justice forgiveness and mercy
Love is the lesson message and deed
To share with everyone as a turn around
I listen with the deaf
I see along with blind
I speak via the mute
I walk alongside the lame
I rise against injustice and violence
I vie against exploitation and cruelty
I shun mammonism and hedonism
I eschew militarism and patriotism with every fiber of being
I serve the highest
I serve the lowest
Integrity is an aspiration of self-sacrifice
I quake in utter gratefulness