On "A Pear Blossom in the East Wing" by Qiu Wei

 

An old Chinese poet with sights set

on imperial favors and a job

found a way of putting in

a vision of the emperor’s harem

via the orchard of the pears nearby

and the fruit’s sweat-undarkened skin

 

so that, like pear’s scent of bloom,

his own poetic courting

would soak through the robe

of the Son of Heaven.

 

For how else would any

decent concubine

which wants to lay

with majesties and power

prove that she mastered

 

the proper art and science

and the proper wooing etiquette,

 

rending herself as the best—

as glories’ and greatness’

perfectly trained mirror

or a spotless, prostrated pool?

 

Or like a pear plucked,

a kowtowed figure—

knocking off

and losing

both her legs

and head even?

 

And isn’t there even for transience

of freshly snowing scents

written in the finest of the fonts

a certain kind of poesy

qua science as well as art

by which both the author

and the audience could extract

such favors or as much as they can

even from Hades’ incessant forgetting?

 

Just as there must be both art and science

the name of which too might as well

be a sentence—a sort of sine qua non?