June 2022
Robert Wexelblatt
wexelblatt@verizon.net
wexelblatt@verizon.net
Author's Note: Hsi-wei Tales was published two years ago, but I have gone on writing about the Sui Dynasty peasant/poet; he has become as much a friend and collaborator as a character.
The last Sui emperor, Yang Guan, is generally judged China’s worst. He probably murdered his father, spent ruinously on luxuries, composed conventional verses, adopted policies that cost the lives of millions and bankrupted the treasury. When he moved his capital to Luoyang, he had a vast garden built, Xiyuan. He ordered the largest trees in the country to be dug up, carted to rivers, and brought alive to his park. Forests were ravaged, and no one knows how many peasants died satisfying the emperor’s whim.
I live near Boston and teach at Boston University.
The last Sui emperor, Yang Guan, is generally judged China’s worst. He probably murdered his father, spent ruinously on luxuries, composed conventional verses, adopted policies that cost the lives of millions and bankrupted the treasury. When he moved his capital to Luoyang, he had a vast garden built, Xiyuan. He ordered the largest trees in the country to be dug up, carted to rivers, and brought alive to his park. Forests were ravaged, and no one knows how many peasants died satisfying the emperor’s whim.
I live near Boston and teach at Boston University.
Tall Trees In Xiyuan
The sumptuous garden is not for the likes of me;
yet if I shut my eyes I can travel all the way to Luoyang.
I imagine the fragrance of osmanthus and aroma of peonies
hovering above Xiyuan’s six ponds like morning mist.
Across lawns smooth as a new magistrate’s
baize-covered desk, cunningly disposed shrubs
explode weekly like strings of timed fireworks.
Decorated and delicate as court ladies, eight
prettily painted pavilions stand about with beckoning doors.
Beside magnolias and wisteria, water stolen from
the Luo burbles among rocks clad in emerald moss.
And over all tower twisting Huangshan pines, gigantic
fan-like ginkos, lofty cypresses, all torn from their homes
like conscripts at the Wall and Grand Canal.
The great trees that grew up elsewhere stand to attention
like the emperor’s bodyguards, indifferent observers
of the pleasures down below.
I’ve heard Xiyuan is made of
gardens inside gardens, outstripping in complexity
even the legendary park of Han Wudi.
The paradise gives no hint of the crushed oaks and firs,
the hacked arborvitae, felled birches, and dead
maples rotting away in provincial mud.
These monumental copses stretch from dirt to sky.
In the Emperor’s garden everything is
clipped and cared-for, clean and serene.
And nowhere even a single corpse to be seen.
©2022 Robert Wexelblatt
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