February 2025
Robert Wexelblatt
robertwexelblatt@gmail.com
robertwexelblatt@gmail.com
Author's Note: Years ago, I wrote a story about an imaginary peasant and sandal-maker of the Sui Dynasty. As a boy, Chen Hsi-wei performed a service for the future Emperor Wen then turned down the customary material rewards in favor of an education. Hsi-wei became a poet, and the story included one of his poems. I thought it an experiment, a one-off; but there have been dozens of tales and verses since. Rarely does a story come without a poem to conclude it or a poem without a tale to account for it. Here are two of Hsi-wei’s poems minus the tales.
The Witch of Wu
The world has mysteries to spare yet the people desire more.
The sages in Daxing deplore the peasants’ obstinacy.
They think what they don’t know isn’t worth the knowing.
Peasant lore is ignorance, they say, their wisdom folly.
The Middle Kingdom teems with the living.
Why overcharge it with countless spirits of the dead?
Yet the people need ghost tales, though in the stories it is
the dead who are needy, begging to be fed, avenged, reborn.
The world overflows with injustices
that swell the throngs of restless ghosts.
The Nu Gui, with their long tresses and white gowns,
abused in life, raped, dressed themselves
in red then hanged themselves or drowned.
Wrongfully killed, the Yuan Gui drift though
the countryside seeking to clear their names,
crying accusations and leaving clues.
Stories of redress slake a peasant’s thirst for justice,
if only in imagination and only for a night.
Belief, observed Gaozhi, is first cousin to need.
As bad, he warned, to believe nothing as everything.
Even the Enlightened One did not deny the existence of ghosts.
Show them compassion, he admonished, but do not worship them.
In Wei Dung lies a woman older than the eldest juniper.
She dwells in a world swarming with spirits through whom
she heals tumors and brings rain. So swear the villagers,
whose crops wither nonetheless, whose children still die young.
The Dragon’s Tail
Once, in the village of Fenghuang, I spied
six boys playing an unfamiliar game.
They lined up, each clasping tight the waist
of the child in front. At a cry from the boy in front,
they began to twist and stumble, screaming,
as children do, with boisterous alarm
and unbridled joy, until the last boy
tackled the first and all fell down.
As they got to their feet, I stopped a boy
of about seven and asked about the game.
It was lunchtime; his friends were scattering.
It’s called Dragon’s Tail, he told me.
The one in front’s the head and the one
in back’s the tail. Tail has to catch
Head and everybody tries to stop him.
So, I guessed, if the tail succeeds, he becomes
the new head and the old head has to take
the place behind him? Impatient to leave,
the boy nodded twice and ran off home.
An amusing diversion, a contest, child’s play.
In Daxing, I sometimes heard news of the goings-on
at court, whispers spreading out from laundries and kitchens.
Ministers tumbling, petrified prefects, magistrates
clutching at the evaporating favor of their superiors,
concubines discarded, first wives introduced to seconds.
In Daxing, many heads are frightened of their tails.
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