Han-shan says: “I have traveled lightly back to this mountain. The few things I brought in my case have fallen out on the way. Behind me along the road strangers pick up the curious flotsam of my journey saying: ‘Who in his right mind could ever have valued this?’ When they find the empty box, they will be even more bewildered. But I have reached the mountain, the high face under a coronal of cloud. How unchanged it is: how incredible still its autumn color: how purple the shivering sedge among the gray headstones. The church is like an October cloud dropped to the foot of the mountain. Everything turns simple again: leaf-shape, mountain-shape, stone-shape, the shape of the beholder’s face lifted simply into the simple air in beautiful seeming. If I were to look back, I could see down the red road a bright scrap of blue bouncing in the wind. But I can only stare, entranced, at the great mantled capstone of the county, as fabulously whispering now in the autumn wind as in yesteryear before the angry, purposeful dream came true.”
Han-shan says: “Among peacocks sparrows don’t count. I’ve a taste for the flamboyant, For dyed-in-the-wool folk Whose appearance makes a shout On the quiet mountain, Even among autumn trees. Come to see me if you have Something startling to wear Or a poem in your head. I don’t much care for visitors Too pallid to stain the mist. Some of you I would By nature prefer to others. But love is a gambler’s choice. I am not the same man you left When we were both twenty, Whoever you are. If you dare To make the journey, look For me among mountains.”
All winter, Like turreted head-dresses Of congelated kings, Crown gourds stood along The windowsill, golden as autumn. Now an opened door discloses, Pitted and pale, A row of old lepers. Han-shan sees the bowl of diadems On the bureau’s top Has become a dull heap of glories. He will bury the ruined mitres In the garden where they grew, Sponge the windowsill, Scrub the rot-stained Wooden bowl. He has always believed in succession And adored sweet princes and dynasties— This spring more than ever before, Being old and maudlin.
Because he refused to toss The football in the meadow With his seven brothers, shouting And somersaulting in victory, Sulking in defeat, Choosing instead to keep An imaginary house at the edge Of the wood, under an oak tree Where the moss is silken And blue as his mother’s eyes, She worries about him. Pretending a visit from her, He sets his table with acorn Shells for cups and saucers And sweeps his floor With a milkweed broom. How delightful she will find The cakes of white pebblestones He has baked for her on a plate Of obsidian he found under The meadow waterfall. Like her, he likes a home. But what will his brothers do About the curious Child When she is gone? Who will read to him the stories Of gnomes and djinns and leprechauns He delights to hear And pretend with him that star Flowers once bloomed in the sky? Interpret for him what the wind Is saying? “Listen,” she says. “Hear the voices of the wind.” “Listen,” she says again, And sings for him mysterious Alphabets far travelers bring Into the marketplace, The alphas and omegas of things, The first and the last, While he sops sweet news From a honied bowl. “You will soon,” she tells him, “Have spoons for fingers!” “My thumbs will make big Spoons,” he tells her. But Han likes best the tale Of the wooden boy with the tell-tale Nose that grows longer with each Lie he tells, and Han loves lies, Especially when told by his mother, Whose nose, he can plainly see, Is no longer than his own.
George Addison Scarbrough (1915-2008) was an Appalachian poet from Polk County, Tennessee. Scarbrough published six volumes of poetry: Tellico Blue (E.P. Dutton, 1949); The Course Is Upward (E.P. Dutton, 1951); Summer So-Called (E.P. Dutton, 1956); New and Selected Poems (Iris Press, 1977); Invitation to Kim (Iris Press, 1989); and Under the Lemon Tree (Iris Press, 2011, posthumous). Scarbrough also published a novel, A Summer Ago (St. Luke’s Press, 1986, reprinted by Iris Press 2011). Scarbrough’s poems appeared in over 65 journals, including The Sewanee Review, Harper’s, The Atlantic, The Southern Review, The Virginia Quarterly, and The New Republic. In the 1990s, Poetry published over twenty of his Han Shan poems, written from the persona of the Chinese poet. Many of these poems were collected posthumously in Under the Lemon Tree.
Illustrations of varieties of pigeons from Illustriertes Prachtwerk sämtlicher Taubenrassen (1906). Text by Emil Schachtzabel and illustrations by Anton Schoner.
