Category Archives: poem

BOOKS:  木兰辞 [Ballad of Mulan] by Anonymous

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The Ballad of Mulan: 木兰辞 (Simplified Chinese Characters with Pinyin)The Ballad of Mulan: 木兰辞 by Song Nan Zhang
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Available online at YellowBridge

This is a short lyric poem (15-1/2 quatrain, or 62 lines) that tells the story of a young woman who disguises herself as a man and joins the military to fill a slot that would otherwise have required her aged and infirm father to serve. The tiny poem packs in ten-plus years, during which Hua Mulan serves with great distinction and then returns home to take care of her parents. It’s a well-known tale that emphasizes the importance of filial piety and sacrifice. Though outside of China (as well as Taiwan and other Chinese cultural enclaves,) many may know it from the Disney version which has been panned for ditching the Confucian values and replacing them with ones that were thought would resonate better with a Western audience.

The poem is mostly arranged in quatrains of five-character lines with alternate line rhymes.

It’s a quick read and there is no room for the detailed tales of heroism that are depicted in adaptations.

If one is looking for a culturally insightful telling of the story of Hua Mulan, this is the right place to look. I’d highly recommend reading it.

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“Alone” by Edgar Allan Poe [w/ Audio]

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From childhood's hour I have not been
 As others were -- I have not seen
 As other saw -- I could not bring
 My passions from a common spring ---
 From the same source I have not taken
 My sorrow -- I could not awaken
 My heart to joy at the same tone --
 And all I lov'd -- I lov'd alone --
 Then -- in my childhood -- in the dawn
 Of a most stormy life -- was drawn
 From ev'ry depth of good and ill
 The mystery which binds me still --
 From the torrent, or the fountain --
 From the red cliff of the mountain --
 From the sun that 'round me roll'd 
 In its autumn tint of gold --
 From the lightening in the sky
 As it pass'd me flying by --
 From the thunder, and the storm --
 And the cloud that took the form
 (When the rest of Heaven was blue)
 Of a demon in my view --

Death Denied [Haiku]

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a dead tree
 swallowed by creepers
  greens from base up.

“Infant Sorrow” by William Blake [w/ Audio]

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My mother groan'd! my father wept.
 Into the dangerous world I leapt:
 Helpless, naked, piping loud:
 Like a fiend hid in a cloud.
 
Struggling in my father's hands,
 Striving against my swadling bands.
 Bound and weary I thought best
 To sulk upon my mother's breast.

The Avian Unseen [Haiku]

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sunup:
 roosters crow, birds chirp -
  all unseen.

“A Needle’s Eye” by William Butler Yeats [w/ Audio]

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All the stream that's roaring by
   Came out of a needle's eye;
 Things unborn, things that are gone,
    From needle's eye still goad it on.

Flower Garden [Haiku]

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color clash
  in the flower garden
   attracts bees & me.

Nine Dragon Wall [Free Verse]

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If you stare at
   stone dragons
      long enough
   their stone-chiseled
      forms will start 
      to glide
         in tracked loops.
 A steady motion of the
   sinuous segments 
      unbroken by cloud.
 They move slowly 
   and steadily --
      never breaking off
         into a new course.
 Some figure-eight,
   Some circle,
      but never do they
         come off the wall.
 Their movements never
   menace.

FIVE WISE LINES [January 2025]

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“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, does not go away.”

Philip k. dick

“The Wu and the Yue peoples hate each other. But in the same boat in a storm, they work together like left and right hands.”

SunZi in The ART of War

“Travel changes you. As you move through this life and this world you change things slightly, you leave marks behind, however small. And in return, life – and travel – leaves marks on you. Most of the time, those marks – on your body or on your heart – are beautiful. Often, though, they hurt.”

anthony bourdain

What allows great kings and generals to win, more frequently than ordinary men, is foreknowledge.
Foreknowledge cannot be attained by spirits or deduced or calculated.”

Sunzi in The ART of war

“Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.”

T. S. Eliot

“With a Clean Heart” (Tiszta szívvel) by József Attila [w/ Audio]

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Have no mother, have no dad,
 have no country, have no God,
 no cradle, no winding sheet,
 no lover, no kisses sweet.

Haven't eaten for three days,
 my head spins, the body sways...
 Twenty years! My might, my gale,
 twenty years are now for sale.

If there is no customer,
 sell it to Devil in hell.
 With a clean heart, I will steal,
 If need be, I'll even kill.

They'll catch me and hang me up,
 with soft earth cover me up,
 and death-bringing grass will start
 from my beautiful, clean heart.

Translation by Frank Veszely in Hungarian Poetry: One Thousand Years (2023) Altona, Manitoba: Friesen Press, pp. 156-157.

NOTE: This poem got Attila expelled from university and preemptively scuttled any possibility of a career in academia. (Hence, my affinity for it. Any poetry that extracts such a cost is probably excellent poetry.)