A Hundred and Seventy Chinese Poems/Alarm at first entering the Yang-tze Gorges

ALARM AT FIRST ENTERING THE YANG-TZE GORGES

Written in 818, when he was being towed up the rapids to Chung-chou.

Above, a mountain ten thousand feet high:
Below, a river a thousand fathoms deep.
A strip of green, walled by cliffs of stone:
Wide enough for the passage of a single reed.^[1]
At Chü-t'ang a straight cleft yawns:
At Yen-yü islands block the stream.
Long before night the walls are black with dusk;
Without wind white waves rise.
The big rocks are like a flat sword:
The little rocks resemble ivory tusks.

 

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We are stuck fast and cannot move a step.

How much the less, three hundred miles?^[2]
Frail and slender, the twisted-bamboo rope:
Weak, the dangerous hold of the towers' feet.
A single slip — the whole convoy lost:
And my life hangs on this thread!
I have heard a saying "He that has an upright heart
Shall walk scathless through the lands of Man and Mo."^[3]

How can I believe that since the world began
In every shipwreck none have drowned but rogues?
And how can I, born in evil days^[4]
And fresh from failure,^[5] ask a kindness of Fate?
Often I fear that these un-talented limbs
Will be laid at last in an un-named grave!

 

1. See Odes, v. 7.
2. The distance to Chung-chou.
3. Dangerous savages.
4. Of civil war.
5. Alluding to his renewed banishment.