Why Nature Has Reasons

Lui Chi: The Terror

I worry that my ink well 
    may run dry,
that right words 
    cannot be found.
I want to respond to each 
   moment's inspiration.
Work with what is given;
    that which passes cannot be detained.
Things move into shadows and vanish;
    memory returns in an echo.
When Spring arrives,
    we understand why Nature has reasons.
Thoughts rise form the heart on breezes
    and language finds its speaker.
Yesterday's buds are this morning's blossoms
    we draw with a brush on silk.
Every eye knows a pattern;
    every hear hears distant music.

Lui Chi's Wen Fu

Translated by Sam Hamill

The Wen Fu, from the 3rd century, is the earliest work on the poetic arts in Chinese.  However, no distinction seems be be made between poetry and music, or at least, poetry and song, so it is a guide for musicians as well.  It's published by Milkweed Editions under the name The Art of Writing.

If you're interested what tradition might mean, where it comes from and how it abides, read this little book.  It is from a world and time almost inconceivably remote.  It is ironic that classical Chinese poetry became the touchstone for so much of modernism in American letters, with it's own rejection of the 19th century poetic canon.   

This encounter can be explored in detail in the Eliot Weinberger edited New Directions Anthology of Classical Chinese Poetry, which includes translations by Ezra Pound, Kenneth Rexroth, Gary Snyder and David Hinton.  It also includes what appears to be a fantastical translation of the Wen Fu by Achilles Fang and essays and reviews of each others' work by Williams and Snyder.